After five years of planning, eight months spent nurturing four pitches which then had to be transported from Australia to the US, six months of construction work on $30m worth of temporary stadium, including the installation of 34,000 seats and 100 hospitality boxes, the organisation of a security operation that involved seven agencies, including the police forces of three counties and the FBI, the deployment of snipers, Swat teams, roadblocks, a helicopter, a 50-person video surveillance team, hundreds of buses, and the closure of 1,000 acres of public park, the biggest game ever played in the US was finally ready to get under way.
And then it started raining.
