Scotland and Edinburgh Rugby centre Nick de Luca writes his exclusive Rugby World Cup blog for www.edinburghrugby.org giving an exclusive in camp in-sight as the national team prepares to take on England for a place in the quarter-finals...
It's the eve of the big one, versus England for a place in the World Cup quarter finals, and the atmosphere is palpable.
But before I get onto that I guess I should summarise the last game and our week in Auckland. As you will all know, we lost narrowly to Argentina in what was an absolute heart breaker. We gave it our all and should have been out of sight before they snatched a victory.
We now have a tough challenge ahead of ourselves but we will be throwing everything at the English to make sure we're not on the plane home this weekend! You won't have seen the local press down here, but some of them aren't our biggest fans, so it would be great to quieten them down too!
We've had a great week in Auckland and the boys were flying in the team run today. The surface is perfect, the stadium awesome and let's just hope the rugby gods are kind to us this week and the rain stays away!
As always though we have had some free time to enjoy ourselves and this week our social organiser did a great job. We had a trip on a 600bhp power boat around Auckland harbour, after which don't think any of us had a dry patch on us! Then we had a sky jump off the sky tower, a 192m building just next to our hotel. It involved hanging over the edge of the building, harnessed up, and jumping off. It then dangled you for 10 seconds before you plummeted to the ground. There was a great turn out, all with nerves of steel but one guy stood out from the crowd! Simon Danielli, who has a proper fear of heights, managed to shuffle himself to the edge and jump off.
Now to the business end again, and it's vital we get this one right. There's a lot of history riding on this one. That's certainly what the supporters have been telling us in Auckland today. The noise they made in the Cake Tin last week was brilliant and everyone's telling us that Eden Park will be rocking tomorrow.
Roll on kick-off. That's certainly what the supporters have been telling us in Auckland today. The noise they made in the Cake Tin last week was brilliant and everyone's telling us that Eden Park will be rocking tomorrow.
Good luck to Edinburgh against Munster and congratulations to Mini Vis on signing for us, great interview on Black and Red TV from the Visser's as well.
Nick de Luca
