by Ed Downer
We knew it was going to be a tough match, but with a great ground and changing rooms, we almost felt professional. It was a lovely sunny day, though, which wasn’t good news for the many gingers amongst us. We had a great turnout, with a full team and six subs – like I said, almost professional.
We took the kick-off, chased it down and within 3 minutes our dancing Argentinian (Seb) was over the line, with our singing Sparrow on hand to slot it between the posts for an extra 2. Great start.
We had some great forward moves and we kept hitting them close to the ruck and breaking the line, ending in Taku from the wing putting another score on the Turkeys. Sparrow-san again slot it between the uprights to make it 14-0 after less than 10 minutes. We could taste the winning beers already!
More good forwards moves put us in a great field position, and a few breaks of the line from the backs and big boy Tavis (a.k.a ‘who is Tavis?’) was over for his first try for the Cru. Unfortunately, Sparrow’s leg must have been a bit tired from his last conversion, and missed.
During the next 10 minutes, the opposition had a bit more time on the ball, but we fought hard and put pressure on them to make some mistakes. One great bit of play was where Sparrow – nowhere near the ball – called “MARK” when Taku caught it in our 22 and the ref allowed it. We weren’t sure of the rules, but we thought that refs know best, so took it and cleared our lines. We worked the ball up the pitch with the forwards and this turned into another Cru try from Tomo, and with Sparrow’s leg feeling better we were up to 26-0.
For the next 10 minutes we took our feet off the gas a bit and our Captain Tom Cocks knocked the ball on: rather than admit that the shovels that he calls hands couldn’t catch a cold, he decided to blame the ball and asked for it to be changed. What’s that saying about a bad workman, ‘always blames his…’? Not to be outdone, Foster and Reece joined suit and gave the opposition some easy possession. They converted this ball in hand to a try and made it 26-5. In an effort to redeem himself, Cocks got himself a try just before half time to make the score at the break a tasty 33-5: pretty awesome for 35 minute halves.
The midday sun was beating down hard and we were all a bit tired, but loving the scoreline and hungry for more. We made some changes and got back on the pitch for more pillaging. Again, we got off to a great start by Tavis getting over the line for his second try to make it 38-5. We were having some great scrums and really good open play and off-loads; the opposition were quick at the breakdown but we were able to keep a handle on things. 15 minutes into the second half we were a whopping 45-5 up, thanks to a cheeky try from our number 9 Owen, with help from Sparrow getting the conversion. THEN, someone I don’t know who gave Foster the clip board. We got on some fresh legs all at once, and Anthony and Chris came on for their first game of rugby ever; Owen, Ev and Cocks came off, and Hiro came to tighten the pack. As many of you know, they don’t teach these public school boys a lot when it comes to maths, so we had 13 players on the pitch, then it went to 16 then 14, and a further five minutes later we returned to 15. As you can imagine, all kinds of abuse was hurled Foster’s way.
With a lot of changes to the pack, the opposition took advantage and managed to get 2 tries on us at the end of the game, making the final score 45-19. All in all, a good result and great to see some new guys on the field. Foster was our MVP as voted by the Turkeys and Sataki-san was our vote for their best player.
After a quick shower and a “watch where you’re swinging that thing, Frank” we hit up the Dan Mariya izakaya for some food and beers. The highlight of this was Evan getting lemoned (golf-balled) by his son, starting a chain reaction with me getting golf-balled with half a jug in my hand, and Tavis getting the same but with a full jug of beer, having to down it in 1 (nearly). This made people start to hate this game and after Tavis chugged his jug, he decided to throw the lemon out of the window…except the window was closed. Good work! We moved on from here after playing the pee game (which I think Evan won) to the Hub where Foster tried to pull but was yet again unsuccessful. Hang in there mate, it’s a numbers game. Great day, great results, good food and beers with the lads: this is what Sundays are all about!
The points for the game were
5 points – Seb; 4 points – Foster; 3 points – Taku; 2 points – Tavis; 1 point – Reece
