We are often told Auckland is the biggest Pacific city in the world—whether that's true or not is debatable—however you wouldn't always know just how big Tāmaki Makaurau’s island populations are as they struggle for visibility at the city’s physical periphery, largely to the West and the South.Roll in Mate Ma’a Tonga.Almost as if the point was visibility, Tongan league fans printed the city in red: cars, houses, themselves. As the bus to the game rolled through the suburbs towards Mount Smart Stadium, the staccato smattering of bedecked houses became a constant patter, the honking of horns an unbroken blast, and—nearing the stadium—the pedestrians a river of red.
Advertisement
We drifted with it towards the stadium gates, dozens of flags unfurling above us in the breeze and dozens of children atop parents’ shoulders. Hymnal singing erupted at intervals, interrupted by the occasional blast of an air horn. I was pressed against Lewis, a Tongan who lives in Auckland with his young family. “Win or lose,” he told me, motioning at the surrounding high-spirited crush of bodies, “we’ve already won.”Tonga, unfortunately, didn’t win. Cheered on by 26,214 people—incredible, given the Tongan population of Aotearoa is about 60,000, and the population of Tonga itself roughly 110,000—Tonga went down 34-16 to the world-champion Australian Kangaroos.By every other metric though it was a win. The previous weekend, fewer that 13,000 fans had turned out to the same stadium to watch the Kiwis beat Australia by two points. Double that number—under a blanket of red Tongan cloth, with the occasional Samoan and New Zealand flag woven into the mix—turned out for what was technically a game between two countries at a neutral venue.It was an emphatic statement: Aotearoa is a nation that contains many other nations, and is so much better for it.
