For a Welshman temporarily living in New Zealand, international rugby fixtures at Eden Park are the first thing booked into a busy diary. And, with our youngest daughter staying with friends for the evening, we head head to Eden Park with our $50 tickets (£20) for the un-covered stands at the Cricket Avenue end of the to watch the All Blacks v Australia in a crucial game which both sides need to win to win the Tri-Nations tournament. Torrential rain is forecasted 

And when I say torrential, I mean torrential. The weather all week has been extreme. On Wednesday the ‘Pacific Sun’ cruise liner, a huge ship, carrying 1700 passengers arrived in Auckland. The ship had been 600Km off Auckland when the low pressure system hit it with 100km/h winds and a 7m swell. At one point the ship was listing at a 20 degree angle. A passenger remarked that ‘I was walking through the dining room when the biggest wave rocked the boat…that’s when things really started to fly, there was stuff everywhere people were screaming and sliding from one end of the boat to the other….crew took up positions around the boat wearing their life jackets which added to the air of fear and panic…’. The same storm has battered Auckland for the last couple of days with powerful winds and torrential rain.

This is the last game before the stadium is redevelopment for the World Cup in 2011 and getting soaked-through at Eden Park seems poetic somehow.

Eden Park has long held a fascination for me. I remember watching the 1987 World Cup as a university student in Cardiff on a black and white television and being enthralled by this higgledy-piggledy sports venue surrounded by single storey tin-roofed wooden houses. All the spectators seemed to be dressed in cagoules or ‘Swandri’ chequered textile coats and to a person appeared to be wearing hand-knitted bobble hats and sporting moustaches. There were no women in attendance. Or if there were they were very gruff.

The forecasted bad weather for today’s game has prompted spectators to reach for their ‘back-country’ wet-weather gear. The picture in front of me is an impressive reminder that, while it is claimed New Zealanders are becoming soft, they are an outdoor population at heart.

As spectators mill-around under the stand to avoid the rain before the kick-off of a game which the All Blacks win convincingly 39 – 10, it strikes me that I have never seen so many people at a sports stadia wearing ‘gum boots’ (the local term for wellies), waterproof coats and ‘leggings’. The standard attire in front of me would serve a fishing trawler’s crew well and would ‘tick’ the organo-phosphate protective equipment requirements ‘box’ for the most officious Health and Safety inspector visiting a mid Wales hill farm on sheep-dipping day. I have to remind myself that I am at a global sports event 3 miles from down-town Auckland’s cosmopolitan Sky Tower and Sky City Casino and not at Sennybridge livestock market.

Apart from my wife and I there are very few people wearing brightly coloured waterproofs made of modern materials like Gortex. After all, bright colours would ruin a fishing or pig hunting trip – both popular hobbies in this country and, with the strong New Zealand tradition of ‘make-do and mend’, why would you buy new waterproofs made of modern materials if the ones you have already have keep out the rain adequately?

There is also a bearded man wearing a beaten-up brimmed-hat and a truly ancient oilskin coat which hangs down to his feet. How many wild pigs has he bled and how many fish has he ‘gaffed’ wearing that coat I wonder. The crowd is also sprinkled with tough-looking Maoris and Polynesians you’d cross the street to avoid if you didn’t know better. They do not wear coats.

This is the last match at Eden Park with its current configuration of stands. The East Enclosures and South Stand will be demolished and replaced in readiness for the World Cup. This match perhaps represents the end of a great tradition of a stoic population standing very suitably clothed in appalling weather conditions at this most iconic of sports grounds to watch (but rarely roar) the All Blacks on. Japanese cars, ‘fast food’ and DVDs have become a firm favourite of this changing nation, wearing ‘gum-boots’ to watch rugby at Eden Park may be about to be confined to the history books !

But hold on a moment. After checking the Eden Park web site I am relieved to discover that, despite this city’s fair share of inclement weather, the redeveloped of the stadium will include whole new swathes of uncovered seating. The tradition of wearing ‘gum boots’ and oilskins to rugby internationals looks assured for future generations. ‘Good on ya’ New Zealand.