by Owen Morris
Dasewa was to be the first of our Tokyo cup matches, and for many players their first taste of the Tokyo Cup`s peculiarities (not sure if that`s the correct word: Frank offered some more colourful choices but they would be barely appropriate for a squaddie’s stag-do, let alone a world-renowned and respected website such as this).
Pecularities such as the requirement to be at the ground 80 minutes before kick-off. Although, being at the ground at all proved to be almost too difficult for Corey to manage, driving his car and being navigated by a slightly worse for wear Matt Foster.
Peculiarities such as proving you have a first aid kit which, thanks to our strong and stable (and absent) club captain, was – of course – missing. Tooley took this in his stride though, and jaunted off to buy a new one, whistling a merry tune as he skipped down the road. He didn`t really: he was not a happy Kiwi.
Peculiarities such as only being allowed 4 backs to pick from; actually, this was more of a self-imposed rule…
The Crusaders opened up the scoring after 10 minutes – Foster with one of his trade mark water-buffalo-esque runs down the blind side – targeting the opposition full back who was both in fear of the leviathan baring down on him, and in awe at the speed at which he was arriving. Foster flattened him. Foster scored.
Dasewa quickly worked out that the Cru back line was somewhat less than mobile, and were able to run around the edges to dot down three unanswered tries. The Cru fought back with tries from Reece and Owen to level the scores, but from then until the last-minute try from Seth, it was all Dasewa on the scoreboard. It finished up as a 26-56 defeat, although the team put up a decent show of themselves given the circumstances: Tavis showed great strength in consistently breaking the line; Evan showed great tenacity in not shutting-up for the whole match, and Sparrow showed great skill in managing to appeal to the referee for a tackle infringement whilst he was being tackled.
More importantly, the loss didn’t stop the festivities, led by a sidelined Zimbabwean in the Ojisan bar.
Also, a big thanks to Melissa, Madoka, Libby and others whose names I don’t know for coming to help out as sideline staff.
MVP points were : 5 – Reece; 4 – Gsup; 3 – Tavis; 2 – Yuuta; 1 – Owen
