The Stadium of Four Million, as they call themselves, are on a knife edge

It has been a funny old week for South African reporters in Taupo. I caught fish and my colleague, Vata Ngobeni, caught pigs.

Okay, the pigs caught him but let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good introduction.

A number of us had been in a pub watching the All Blacks play France and that night have been where it started going wrong for us – Vata, in particular, because we were conspicuously supporting the French – much to the annoyance of the locals. It was not a premeditated thing – at a tournament everybody goes with the underdogs and to those Kiwis who gave us those deathly looks, I would ask this: how many of you will be supporting the Springboks in this same pub when they play Samoa on Friday? Exactly!

Blow me down, though, it was a heck of an experience to be squeezed into a pub in a town in Middle New Zealand to watch a game against their nemesis side. I swear the patrons rendered themselves psychotic somewhere between the anthems and the Haka, and when the first try was scored, us Saffers were genuinely shocked at the scale of the pandemonium. Heck, we could have been anywhere in South Africa when the Boks score a try against New Zealand, Australia and definitely England.

Well almost. There is clearly a manic edge to the long-suffering locals here. No, seriously, you can taste the fear of failure.

The Stadium of Four Million, as they call themselves, are on a knife edge – on one side of the blade is ecstasy the likes of which the sporting world has never seen before, on the other is a psychological calamity on a scale that would awaken Sigmund Freud gleefully from the dead.

[the author with mr myers on the way to the cake tin for 1st bok game against Wales]

If, somehow, the All Blacks manage to flog this World Cup, the best thing, quite honestly, is for the mother of all quakes to strike swiftly and powerfully, and for these two islands to sink peacefully to the bottom of the Pacific, never to be seen or heard of again.

But back to Taupo. How could we describe this sleepy town? It is kind of like Midmar Dam, only Howick is right on the shore side and much bigger. Or maybe Hartebeespoort Dam with Pretoria on its doorstep, but quite a bit smaller. You get the idea.

On our arrival from Wellington, the tourism folk hosted a breakfast for the media. Champagne was served – at 7am this was a shock even for us hardened hacks. The local Mare (that is how you pronounce Mayor in Kiwi-speak) welcomed us and told us what jolly good fellows we were, which in hindsight I understand was a subtle, sub-conscious nudge to the pub that we ended up frequenting called, wait for it, Jolly Good Fellows.

Maybe he has shares in the place. And a cheery fellow indeed was Mare Rick Cooper. Make yourselves at home he implored. With mic in hand he strutted and cheered, and threw open the doors to the town, the subtext being that we would extol the virtues of Taupo to our readers back home.

And the town indeed has many virtues. It is beautiful even beyond the claims of its postcards. The crystal-clear lake has a snow-capped mountain range as a backdrop; the sparkling Waikato River rushes through the town. There is not a drop of litter, you could eat off the pavements, even the public toilets are triumphantly called SuperLoo – and they have 24-hour showers to boot. There is not a hint of crime, as the growing SA expat population will tell you ad nauseum. It is hard to spot a cop.

Which made it all the more startling to hear on Sunday that after us older press men on tour had retired to our lodgings, the Rozzers had come out to play and seized on poor old Vata, carting him off to the Pig Factory (the local moniker for the Cop Station) and searched him on suspicion of being a drug dealer.

The poor bloke had done nothing but sit at the bar and look, let’s venture, like a Nigerian (forgive the stereotype) in a sea of whites. Conclusions were leapt to, and off went Vata (temporarily) to the Factory.

The fall-out since then has been spectacular. TV crews and newpaper reporters descended upon us. The paramount Maori chief of the area hosted Vata at a lunch to extend apologies; the High Commission for New Zealand expressed their regret and there is word that our vice president is getting involved at consular level.

But on ground level, there has not been a murmur from the smiley faces that so heartily welcomed us two weeks ago. The tourism board has been oddly silent as they pray that the embarrassment will not linger, and as for old Rick, the roly-poly, back-slapping Mare, I reckon he will continue hiding under his bed until we have vacated his realm and normality (for Taupo) can resume.

MIKE GREENAWAY IN TAUPO