CR & FC ~ News

Chris Masoe
		Dear Diary, I woke up at about 8:30am this morning and felt pretty good. I headed to the team room for breakfast – we always eat separately in the hotel on game day to keep distractions down. Some players can't hold food down on game day but I love to have a big feed to fill me up. We try and keep everything consistent no matter where we are and our pre-match meal isn't normally flash. The mood in the dinning room is also quite different from the rest of the week and everyone is beginning to focus on the game – no joking or loud talking.

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I'm not really one to talk a lot; I like to ‘walk to talk' so I'm a bit quiet on game day.

Although I had been told I was in the reserves this week I kept my routine the same because you never know when someone is going to be injured. As a reserve you need to know the game plan and your position around the field.

As it turned out Richie (McCaw) was ruled out. I was called into the coaches' room on Friday morning and told the news I was going to play my second Test after debuting against Wales two weeks ago.

The first thing I did was ring my family when I found out I was starting and they had already set the alarm to watch it live.

Although we had a police escort to Twickenham they didn't do much except drive in front of us, so the trip took about 50 minutes and I kept falling asleep on the bus. Saimone (Taumoepeau) kept waking me up but I looked around the bus and a few of the boys were doing the same thing I was.

It doesn't come much bigger than playing England at Twickenham and I was pretty pumped up when I ran out. When I was standing with the team singing the anthem I couldn't believe it, especially since it was probably our No 1 team. Looking over my shoulder and seeing legends like Aaron (Mauger), Tana (Umaga), Dezzy (Dan Carter) and JC (Jerry Collins) made me realise what an honour it was filling in for Richie in this important game.

It was my second Test and I've done two different hakas. I didn't play any age grade rugby for New Zealand so these were my first haka before a match. I did one with the Sevens team but that was only after each tournament and that's a lot different than before a big Test match.

England had definitely come to play and we didn't start well conceding that early try. When we got together under the posts Tana said ‘come on boys, we have to go now. We're not going to play catch-up rugby so let's get together and help the brothers out' and we started the game again when we kicked off.

The game went pretty fast and the crowd was helping them along and it was hard to hear the calls. I couldn't even hear Tana when he was leading the haka.

		I came close to scoring my first Test try after Tana made a break and after a dive I grounded the ball on the defender's leg and then lost control of it. Hopefully I'll get another chance. None of the boys like to let the team down and get sent off but the referee thought I was off my feet, gave me the yellow card and that was the end of the game for me. It really frustrated me and I just kept my head down when I was walking off in case the TV cameras saw me say something I shouldn't.
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I ended up standing for the last three minutes in the bin and watched England throw everything at us. I felt that if they scored it would have been my fault so I was happy when the final whistle blew.

Afterward in the change room the boys were tired. It was a huge physical game and it was a real battle.

At about 1am I ordered a couple of toasted sandwiches from room service and went to bed. It was a day I'll never forget.