Cheap tickets made playoff game special

I have attended a Rugby World Cup final, a five-set Australian Open men’s tennis final, the NZ Sevens in Wellington, NBA, MLB and NRL games, a large number of All Blacks, Super Rugby and NPC rugby games, along with A-League, English Premier League and Ecuadorian Serie A matches, but the best crowd experience I have been in was a match between world football minnows New Zealand and Bahrain in 2009.

Tickets for the World Cup football qualifier between New Zealand and Bahrain were obtainable and affordable, with the most expensive seats costing just $39 each plus a booking fee.

This made the game accessible to more people (not just football fanatics), and we were able to purchase 10 tickets and attend the game in a group.

There was an unknown element to the match, with football playing second fiddle to rugby in New Zealand, which is probably why the tickets were priced so low.

It also provided lower expectations for fans who had little to lose financially by attending, and had those expectations blown away.

I still remember the electric buzz, which hit me when we walked into the stadium to find our seats; this was no ordinary game.

The boisterous crowd of 35,000 was a sea of people dressed in white with far more chanting and cheering than any rugby match I have attended.

The deafening cheers after the Rory Fallon goal, the Mark Paston penalty save and the final whistle were something that will live in my memory forever.

Compare this to the 2011 Rugby World Cup final at Eden Park.

I paid $800 to attend the match for a seat in the uncovered section, while fans were only able to purchase tickets in pairs because of scarcity, so while I knew 10 people attending the match, we were scattered around the stadium.

Sure, the All Blacks lifted the William Webb Ellis Cup aloft afterwards, and we got a closeup view of Tony Woodcock diving over to score the first try of the match, but the game was a nervous watch for New Zealand supporters keen to see their team win the Rugby World Cup for the first time since 1987.

There were also elevated expectations that because I was paying $10 per minute of rugby, that the standard and experience of the game had to be amazingly high, yet this wasn’t the case as the All Blacks struggled to get past a plucky France 8-7.

While the ticket prices to the All Whites versus Peru match compare favourably to international sports and entertainment, I hope it doesn’t lose the charm of being as accessible for the fans as the 2009 All Whites-Bahrain game was. they will never get a visa in time, even if we are trying to find a lastminute way to speed up the process. What now? The paperwork usually has to go through Washington’s Circumlocution Office. What’s it got to do with them? Maybe we are at war. We condemn you to fight American immigration for eternity.

Isn’t it already hard enough already for the 31 million Peruvians on this planet? They’ve had the Shining Path and military regimes and slaughter and hyperinflation and poverty. And now they’ve got this beautiful team and a bit of hope and we can’t even waive a visa in their face.

So I’m cheering for the boys of coach El Tigre. I’m cheering for Pablo Guerrero and Renato Tapia and Edison Flores. I’m cheering for skill and passion and beauty. I’m cheering for Luis Miguel who says, ‘‘We love this game so much, because it’s a testament of loyalty not just to your team but to the people you love.’’

I’m cheering for football.