USA-England Game, A Few Pictures

I managed to snag a last-minute ticket to the USA-England game, so we made the trip to Rustenburg on Saturday from Mbabane. I have many great pictures and a handful of stories that I'll try to tell soon, but here's a few pictures before a longer post tonight or tomorrow.

In short, the game was a blast, the crowd was awesome, and the trip was well worth the 6-hour drive each way. That USA managed a draw is amazing (I've been told, in truth it was sort of difficult to see the game), and hopefully means that next Friday's trip to Johannesburg to see the USA-Slovenia game will give us cause to celebrate again.

A few pictures (Picasa/Blogger limits me to four, but maybe there's a way to change that?)

Cooper, another American Swazi expat, ordered the bolt of fabric you see here and had it made into a business suit. It's not hard to see why he was a fan favorite, for English and American fans alike. The USA Vuvuzela was a big hit, as well.

Erin (a doctor working for Baylor University's clinic(s) in Swaziland) and I in our seats about an hour before kickoff. Our relatively more subdued outfits, compared to Cooper at least, included a flag and a USA scarf for me and a wearable flag, regular flag, and USA Vuvuzela for Erin. The Budweiser--exclusive beer of the World Cup, which the Brits weren't too happy about--in my hand was the most expensive beer I've purchased in Africa at 30 Rand, or ~$4. Usually beers top out at about 10 Rand. We made up for it later at a local township bar on our way back to the car -- where we got 12 beers for 110 Rand for the group.

The view from our seats. You'll notice a dark square in the middle on the opposite side. Our best guess is that that was supposed to be a scoreboard, possibly with the time, maybe the score of the game, and potentially some other information. In reality it was just blank, except for a brief stint at the start of the second half where they showed the score. It's not like it's the world cup, or the game that sold out the fastest of all. They did announce how much injury time was left at the end of each half, so that was nice. The stadium was pretty packed, but is relatively small capacity of 44,000 compared to Johannesburg and others which hold 70,000-90,000 people.


The road from the Johannesburg airport toward downtown was lined with flags for several miles.  We stayed in Johannesburg for the night, which was about 2 hours from the game.

More to come, I have a few posts that are written already but that I haven't found time to put up, along with some more pictures.

Garrett