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Blue Kiwi

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Toffee in Jandals

Toffee in Jandals

Player Valuation: £35m
Hi Blues everywhere;

My name is Craig and I'm from Christchurch, in the South Island of New Zealand.

After a little while of lurking on this forum I thought it was about time I got on board. I first "discovered" Everton when I was a wee fella of nine years old, when, believe it or not, the Everton first team made a tour of New Zealand after the '87 league triumph (check it out here if you're at all interested, http://www.rsssf.com/tablese/everton-nz87.html). The team played a couple of games, held various coaching clinics with the young kids, so this, coupled with a football-mad (or "soccer", as the uninitiated call it down under) father, had me hooked.

Later the internet age helped make following Everton from 20,000km away easier, not that the 1990's / early 2000's gave us much to shout about of course. A love of travelling brought me to the UK and Goodison Park for the first time in 2003; seeing a young Rooney strutting his stuff had me believing we could, finally, be on the cusp of re-claiming our status as giants of the beautiful game. How naive was I. Fortunately, my current job has helped enable me to make it to the UK a few times since, I was at Goodison in 2008 to see us snatch a draw from the jaws of victory 2-2 against Aston Villa; and my last Goodison visit was in 2015 when on a European honeymoon with my wife.

upload_2017-7-1_16-54-10.webp


She has, by the way, embraced all things Everton too, so rest assured there is at least two die-hard Blues in Christchurch. Just unfortunate that the game we went to was in the dying embers of Roberto's regime, an incredibly disappointing 2-0 home defeat to Sunderland.... even Danny Graham scored against us, FFS. Sadly I am yet to hear "Grand old Team" being belted out at the end of a game..... maybe it's better if I stay away from Goodison!!

As an aside, (and obviously pandering to my audience!) my visits to Liverpool have made me appreciate the city, and the absolutely brilliant locals - without a doubt, Liverpool folk are the friendliest, and funniest, in the UK. Don't ever change x.

So, in a nutshell, that's me. I feel like I have all the trademarks of being an Evertonian - I smirk at the countless number of plastic fans down under who claim to be supporters of Man U, Chelski, the red hordes, and I rant constantly at the media bias in New Zealand who will generally only highlight the games of the sky media darlings.

Oh, and pineapple on pizza is an abomination inflicted on mankind, cheese on toast I believe I could survive on until the end of my days, NZL beer is great, British beer is as close to drinking urine as I'd ever want to get :pint2:
 
Gidday, make that three. We're going to have meet to watch a game or something.

And jealous you've made the pilgrimage already. One day...
 
Howdo mate, I have a 'One Eyed' daughter that was born when we lived in your fair city ('99), was a pain then trying to get coverage unless we had a live game on your 'sky' (which was our old bskyb boxes that used a 'squarial' over here).
Lived on Fendalton Rd near Mona Vale for a bit but the majority of our 3 years we lived in Beckenham.
I worked at PDL in the old place close to the city before they moved.

I loved it over there tbh & we only came back cos the mrs got homesick after we had our daughter. Could've ended up back anyway after the earthquake like, how did you go on with that ? I keep looking for updates & it seems the place is still stuffed ?
 
the game you speak about btw, which I think was at QE2 ? my foreman told me that his team were asked to be the ball boys (they were young men tbh) & he'd played for nz at u16 or something, anyhow due to an injury he was put on the bench. said they had a great time and the club gave his club loads of stuff & they partied away with them after the game as well.

you may well have gone to a game at QE2 that I went to in the u19 world cup, when a certain Landon Donovan played in the semi against Australia ? he scored, scored his pen in the shootout, got man of the match & mvp for the tournament. At that game Mehrtens & Marshall arrived, sat behind us & 1/2 the crowd just watched them for the whole match.
 

Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian said:
Howdo mate, I have a 'One Eyed' daughter that was born when we lived in your fair city ('99), was a pain then trying to get coverage unless we had a live game on your 'sky' (which was our old bskyb boxes that used a 'squarial' over here).
Lived on Fendalton Rd near Mona Vale for a bit but the majority of our 3 years we lived in Beckenham.
I worked at PDL in the old place close to the city before they moved.

I loved it over there tbh & we only came back cos the mrs got homesick after we had our daughter. Could've ended up back anyway after the earthquake like, how did you go on with that ? I keep looking for updates & it seems the place is still stuffed ?
Click to expand...

Howdy mate, post-quake the city is slowly coming back together, too slowly though for most people's liking. As you probably know, the city centre and the eastern suburbs were badly affected, a large part of the eastern suburbs have now been "red-zoned" which basically means the land there is no longer suitable to be built on. There is new developments going on all the time in the central city between the four big avenues, but it's still likely to be a decade before everything looks how it should. There is much more optimism in the city now than there was 5 years ago of course, the speed of the re-build is a lot quicker, and the plans for the city do look fantastic; can't wait to see it when it comes to fruition. The house my wife and I bought a couple of years ago is a new-build in a new subdivision in Wigram (site of the old Air Force base).

We still get the odd earthquake, thankfully it has settled down a lot over the past few years. 2011/12 was certainly a rough time in Christchurch. My house at the time was virtually unaffected; while several streets away there were houses which were a complete write-off, goes to show how absolutely random the damage from the quake was.
 
Toffee in Jandals said:
Howdy mate, post-quake the city is slowly coming back together, too slowly though for most people's liking. As you probably know, the city centre and the eastern suburbs were badly affected, a large part of the eastern suburbs have now been "red-zoned" which basically means the land there is no longer suitable to be built on. There is new developments going on all the time in the central city between the four big avenues, but it's still likely to be a decade before everything looks how it should. There is much more optimism in the city now than there was 5 years ago of course, the speed of the re-build is a lot quicker, and the plans for the city do look fantastic; can't wait to see it when it comes to fruition. The house my wife and I bought a couple of years ago is a new-build in a new subdivision in Wigram (site of the old Air Force base).

We still get the odd earthquake, thankfully it has settled down a lot over the past few years. 2011/12 was certainly a rough time in Christchurch. My house at the time was virtually unaffected; while several streets away there were houses which were a complete write-off, goes to show how absolutely random the damage from the quake was.
Click to expand...

I burnt off some fuel in my Skyline at Wigram before it was loaded into a container to ship here ... only got rid of it this week!!
Where we lived in Beckenham seemed undamaged, I think it was only the shop fronts that collapsed there (probably the only brick structures tbh) I was a bit surprised that the houses close to the river escaped cos they seemed to cop it everywhere else & used to be forever flooding anyway. Where we lived was in the 'Beckenham Loop' (Corson Ave) but it was raised up from the river & 4 or 5 times a year we were on an island.
A few when we were there moved over to the Gold Coast & it seems that after the quake quite a few decided to head over there to them, mainly my Mrs workmates cos the place she'd worked at (switchtec) was also damaged so they had no work, as far as I know a lot didnt return as had pretty much lost everything. A lot that left probably wont return because in the time it's taken to rebuild they'll have got 'new lives,' many had only moved to christchurch for the work anyway.
 

Toffee in Jandals said:
Hi Blues everywhere;

My name is Craig and I'm from Christchurch, in the South Island of New Zealand.

After a little while of lurking on this forum I thought it was about time I got on board. I first "discovered" Everton when I was a wee fella of nine years old, when, believe it or not, the Everton first team made a tour of New Zealand after the '87 league triumph (check it out here if you're at all interested, http://www.rsssf.com/tablese/everton-nz87.html). The team played a couple of games, held various coaching clinics with the young kids, so this, coupled with a football-mad (or "soccer", as the uninitiated call it down under) father, had me hooked.

Later the internet age helped make following Everton from 20,000km away easier, not that the 1990's / early 2000's gave us much to shout about of course. A love of travelling brought me to the UK and Goodison Park for the first time in 2003; seeing a young Rooney strutting his stuff had me believing we could, finally, be on the cusp of re-claiming our status as giants of the beautiful game. How naive was I. Fortunately, my current job has helped enable me to make it to the UK a few times since, I was at Goodison in 2008 to see us snatch a draw from the jaws of victory 2-2 against Aston Villa; and my last Goodison visit was in 2015 when on a European honeymoon with my wife.

View attachment 38260

She has, by the way, embraced all things Everton too, so rest assured there is at least two die-hard Blues in Christchurch. Just unfortunate that the game we went to was in the dying embers of Roberto's regime, an incredibly disappointing 2-0 home defeat to Sunderland.... even Danny Graham scored against us, FFS. Sadly I am yet to hear "Grand old Team" being belted out at the end of a game..... maybe it's better if I stay away from Goodison!!

As an aside, (and obviously pandering to my audience!) my visits to Liverpool have made me appreciate the city, and the absolutely brilliant locals - without a doubt, Liverpool folk are the friendliest, and funniest, in the UK. Don't ever change x.

So, in a nutshell, that's me. I feel like I have all the trademarks of being an Evertonian - I smirk at the countless number of plastic fans down under who claim to be supporters of Man U, Chelski, the red hordes, and I rant constantly at the media bias in New Zealand who will generally only highlight the games of the sky media darlings.

Oh, and pineapple on pizza is an abomination inflicted on mankind, cheese on toast I believe I could survive on until the end of my days, NZL beer is great, British beer is as close to drinking urine as I'd ever want to get :pint2:
Click to expand...


Have you drank Lion Brown before? Disgusting stuff.

Also, just one more question; do you like movies about Gladiators?
 

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