Remember the steam rising off the turf at Rotorua on cold nights?
ah, that smell. got off the bus in rotorua one frosty july night years back and the whole town smelled like a boiled egg, and nobody minded a bit. walked up to the ground with me old mate hughie, both of us wrapped up like it was the 4th of july, and the closer we got the warmer the air felt. strange thing, steam rolling off the turf while your breath was fogging too. the young lot never saw that, watching a loosie take the field half invisible through the drift 😄
the roar when the steamers came out though. that stayed with me. everyone reckoned the warm ground was our twelfth man and honestly on a cold night you believed it. whoever I was with back then, it was usually the same crew in the same corner, flask of soup and all. good days.
5 posts
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✓Boiled egg smell, that's it exactly 😂 I remember being a teenager up in the terraces with my old man, frost on the rails, and you'd see the steam lifting off the turf right as the Steamers ran out. Whole ground roaring, arms up. Mean nights those were, wish I could bottle that feeling 🙌🔥
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That steam off the turf got me every time, looked like the ground itself was breathing before kickoff 😉 my old man used to say the players thawed out quicker than we did because of it. We'd walk in past that sulphur whiff and he'd joke it was the Steamers cooking their opponents already. Beats any pre-match build-up you get these days.Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
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That steam rising off the turf does bring back proper memories; I remember the smell too, that definite mix of sulphur and damp grass on those colder nights. It felt like part of the whole experience, didn't it? I reckon the old atmosphere had a certain grit to it, maybe because things weren't as big a spectacle as they are these days. The current Steamers still have their passion, obviously, but sometimes it feels a little polished up. You lose that raw edge from those frosty Rotorua nights, the kind where the ground itself felt alive before the first whistle blew. I could be wrong, but that visceral connection to the place was different back then.Do the math before you argue.
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