Lions diary: first Test weekend

What a weekend! The Lions poured into Durban from Friday onwards, kick-starting their two weeks of fun with a weekend in Durban's sun.

What a weekend! The Lions poured into Durban from Friday morning onwards, with the Test tourists kick-starting their two weeks of frenzied fun with a weekend in Durban's sun.

All through Friday the buzz built. Hotel receptions ran over with red-shirted supporters impatient to get their bags into their rooms, their travel-stained clothing off, their travel-smelling bodies showered and their first tour beers in.

On the beachfront, the famed Joe Kools' beer fridges were empty by the middle of the evening, with bar staff too inundated to be able to fill them again. Groups of fans from all four home nations, with national dress woven into a Lions-themed ensemble hugged and sang and danced with the locals. Tour veterans found old friends from four years ago. Tour virgins were initiated. The party went on long into Saturday's small hours.

That was the fans. For us, the weekend began in no less sober fashion, but a little more novel. It took the form of a function laid on by Castle, the tour sponsors who have ben generous to a fault with their unique product, and by Weber, who manufacture high quality braais… that's barbecues to you and I.

A select group of random journalists were invited – press-ganged is more accurate – into competing in a braai-off, featuring selected specialist South African braai recipes to be cooked and judged according to the wiles of a local tasting panel.

Recipes? Well, we were given a chicken, some seasoning and two cans of beer. Instructions were: drink half of each can of beer. Shove the remaining half-can up the seasoned chicken's backside, stick it on the grill and put the lid on, wait for an hour. Remove lid, carve and serve.

Hmmm. The beer was supposed to infuse the chicken with its unique flavour. It may well have done. We shall never know, for thanks to Castle's generosity, beer was all we – or the panel – could taste by the time it was all done. While the other three groups wowed all present with the herbed fish, the paella, and the stuffed fillet, we gnawed some slightly bitter chicken legs. And came fourth out of four.

Meanwhile, in a huge marquee next door, the extent of the rip-off factor in the corporate tickets at ZAR 4,000 per head was made apparent by a ghastly staged interview with Willie John McBride, conducted by South Africa's equivalent of Peter Sissons. Great on current affairs, short on the humour required to make such an occasion a hit.

The beer was expensive, the food ordinary, the warm-up acts – some half-witted and half-cut executive with an appalling Irish accent and worse anecdotes, followed by a dreadful monosyllabic interview with Sharks flanker Keegan Daniel – even worse. And the bar was a cash bar; out of ZAR 4,000, the organisers had not even found a budget to lubricate the evening for free.

The Test tickets have been a rip-off, evidenced by the 5,000 empty seats at Saturday's extravaganza, but this corporate event was catastrophic. The shortcomings of greed, clear for all to see.

There was a slightly surreal air to the feeding of the gathered TV media before the match on Saturday. Not the food, which was splendid, but the setting. We were ushered into none other room than the Sharks' gym, bringing to mind a number of scenes from 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'.

I kept expecting Hatchet Harry to jump out from behind one of the racks of dumbells at any moment and begin demanding fingers. In the event however, Stuart Barnes walked through the door and asked if there were any more bread rolls…

The first Test kicked off at three, but for logistical reasons it was better to take one's viewing seat and typing table early, wedged in as we were like a bunch of battery hens. I spent most of the match with Eddie Butler's elbows nestling gently in my ribs, while the chap next to me and I rotated breathing patterns so as to be able to have room to inhale fully.

One who did not get there early was the journalist, who for his future employment prospects will remain anonymous, but will one day recount a great story about the first Test in Durban when he was roused from his hotel bed one hour before kick-off and rescued himself with a magnificent taxi/running effort to get through the crowds and to his press seat five minutes before the game began…

Finally, a word of warning to the organisers of the soccer next year: Stock Your Bars Properly.

Durban airports' two bars became bars number four and five to be drunk dry by Sunday evening, as the carnival moved on to Cape Town. The rugby masses reacted with an almost sanguine 'oh well, there'll be beers on the plane' shrug of the shoulders. Soccer fans might not be so patient, and there'll be more of them…

Journal kept by Richard Anderson