I went along to watch the Wellington Phoenix kick off their A League season at the Westpac Stadium yesterday.
They got a crowd of 14,421 people to show up.
Apparently this is the biggest crowd to ever watch a football game in NZ. The previous record was also at Westpac Stadium when the Kingz (one of the Auckland-based predecessors to the Phoenix) played in Wellington in 2001.
I’m a sucker for the buzz generated by a big crowd, but the atmosphere really was awesome.
The Yellow Fever were in fine voice.
The best chant of the afternoon was easily “Same old ozzies, always cheating!”. :-)
We were all on our feet for the last 10 minutes, when the Phoenix came back from 2-0 down to draw the match 2-2 and then have a couple of close chances to win.
The star of the show was Brazilian substitute Felipe. You can always tell a player is good when they only have one name! I tried to find out more about him, but his player profile on the web is pretty elusive.
As long as they keep playing well, I have a feeling that this crowd record will be broken again soon!
Congratulations to everybody who played a part in bringing the Phoenix to Wellington.
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