Monday, February 26, 2007

Lots of rugby to talk about.

So I've been putting off this post for a while. As I kinda blogged it....well...it was a tough week. Lots of papers, midterms, illness. IE a shitty week to have one of our toughest games. I turned in my paper on time(kinda), my midterm went well, and I'm still hawking up a lung. But this weekend? Was awesome!

Ok so I'm lazy. I'll talk about the game in depth later today but I've got practice in twenty minutes so I should speed this up. We beat 'em 31-7....which is great but we let them score in the last minute of the match which is disappointing. I scored another try (yep that's three folks) and it wasn't an impressive one, but it was the first of the match. So I scored one at loosehead, my 8 scored, our wing, someone else, and our fullback touched down two beauts.

Also Chico beat Stanford 25-5! Holy Shit! Not saying that Chico didn't have it in 'em to beat Stanford...but by twenty points?! Yea I know Goff is covering this story but I just wanted to make that exclamation in case people missed it. Not saying that Stanford can't come back and defend it's D1 National Champ title...but it looks like their Pacific Coast League ranking is going to drop to two. More on this later. Er did I mention we're playing Chico's b-side this Wednesday, as in two days from now!? Gah. I still can't move my neck or my quads.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

urgh

10 minutes late to class...a page to go. I hate all nighters. @(*#&)@(*#&)(@&*#

We need our numbers.

To show up to practice!!! Anyhoo, Chico kept Davis scoreless, as did Cal with Humboldt and Stanford with UNR (more or less?). Sac state did well against St. Mary's and looks to have some nice wings and competitive ruckers. Oh and San Jose smashed Santa Clara 102-5 or something to that degree (granted they were playing 13s). It's kind of depressing that we only have three league games. Or perhaps just how casually my teammates are taking this fact.

Meh.

I have no expectations for this year.

School is my priority...really...I swear. I'm trying but not to the degree that I want to. Case and point I have less then four hours to write a six page paper on two books I've never read. Hmmmmm. But I'm trying people! And I did decent on my midterm. I just need to spew bullshit and get C's. Wish me luck. Over and out.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Midweek Update

So still no news from Santa Clara. Which is odd because if we really are playing them on Monday.....well....we kiind of need to prepare. It's been a bit rainy at practice and as a result we've been practicing lines...FOREVER. Argh...there is nothing as frustrating as getting clueless uncoordinated rookies showing up mid-season to throw off whatever sort of gel has been developing all preseason. Gah. I don't mind the athletic ones coming in late who can kinda of catch on....but seriously folks. If you can't chew bubblegum and walk at the same time...maybe you should just wait till next fall to join up. Then we can take three months to teach you how to catch a pass...but right now?! Right now?! Monday was two hours of lines in the rain doing pushups at the end of each line. Doing literally hundreds of pushups, situps, star jumps, and planks because some gits decided to show up (LATE AT THAT) for the third time this month (at least be consistant) to goof off and giggle when they drop EVERY SINGLE PASS EVERY SINGLE TIME. Is frustrating. It makes you doubt the consistency of your own pass, you end up tossing hospital passes just on the off chance they may catch them...

I know I sound like a bitter cocky vet but there are a few things I respect and a few things I don't. I can understand not being able to come out for preseason (you didn't know about it...your schedule etc). BUT, if you are going to come out...be dedicated, show up more then once a week, ON TIME or early if you know that there are some fundamentals you want to work on. If there is something you need to work on...practice it daily ourside of practice. I have godawful lineout throws...so I often practice my throws while people are still booting up. I'm also getting a bit peeved over the attitude that is developing that repeatedly missing practice is ok. People were seriously hurt that they didn't start against San Jose after they went missing for two weeks before the game. Then...you would think that they would get the point...but no! The same people, skipping three or four practices at a time or half-assing it when they do show up (LATE). They're going to get what they deserved come next Saturday (when we play sac state).



Fuck. Well I'm sorry for the rant. I have a ton of homework to do this weekend. Fighting the fight to stay in school. I'm doing ok in my CMMU class...B ish.....I'm ok in history but I've got a paper coming up...and finally I got a D on my Politics midterm and another one on Tuesday. Meh.

Hopefully people show up on Friday.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Old News...Or Week Old News

So this weekend we had a by and didn't really do much. I went to a kickboxing class held by my old scrum half...a number of ruggers went and it was pleasant cross training. Sadly I had to opt out of an opportunity to work at the International 7s tournament down in San Diego...which blows but I need to stay in school.

In old news pictures from our game against San Jose. On another note St. Mary's took down Santa Clara in a tens match with 20 minute quarters. The thing to note...they won it 91-15. Fuuuuck. And due to speedy wingers too...so yea I reckon we need to work on our drift defense yeh?

On a cool note I've figured out how to create SVCD's so our team can watch games on a real tv screen instead of my tiny crt monitor (tiny in the screen dimensions...lord knows if this bucket of bolts isn't big enough). I'm working on doing a successful dvd burn as well.

Our next game is this weekend against Sac State and we have a game against the ever-fit Chico State that I'm personally dreading. My teammate and housemate's sister is on that team and she's a very qualified front row eagle. Scrumming down against her with my current pack?! Let's just say the prospect is putting me in tears.

Well anyhoo practice later and I've got things to read....I really hate the colors of the blog but I'll work on it later...it just needed a change.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

UCSC Defeats San Jose State 39-14?

Ok so I'm a forward...thus I couldn't tell you the score if you pinned a point clicker to my rugby shorts. But we scored seven trys in the game and most of them early on before we subbed in b-side players. Our "A-side" (ie our list of uninjured + those who showed up to practice and participated consistently) had three rookie forwards and three rookie backs so a third of them were absolute n00bs...and we scored seven trys (1 hooker, 1 flanker, 1 8-man, 2 wingers, 1 inside center, and 1 scrumhalf). Oh and I scored one of them. Woot!

San Jose was obviously rebuilding this season. They showed some guts in the backline and did a good job sticking with it and playing fierce for all eighty minutes. I propped for the first half of the game and got to play opposite a brand new rookie (which left me with some rather severe bruise on my collarbone due to binding inexperience) and hooked in the second half. We dominated the scrums and managed to do fairly decent in the lineouts ( a bit of the reverse of what I expected). Our backline kicked well and our scrumhalf went on some swell runs. The game managed to stay pretty friendly. Near the end our fitness degenerated and high tackles ensued on both sides (our flanker got a yellow for a team offense and so we were a man down for the last 10 or 15 minutes). There were slightly more scrums then average.

I'd muster more excitement but I'm kind of beat from school and life.

But back to rugby. Yea it was exciting to break in our new jerseys (which are frickin' sweet by the way). They're Kooga jerseys and I couldn't care less about how they look...mainly I'm just in love with the little reinforced piping on the sides of the jerseys. Binding is heaven...at least compared to binding on t-shirts for the last five or six games.

On a slightly separate note...one of our new coaches insisted on making t-shirts. T-shirts that say 2006 National Champions. Now here is the rub....he wasn't our coach last year...and the majority of the people on our team wearing them are rookies. Personally I don't care about the whole respect thing, but teams that match are an affront to my motley crew sensibilities. It was our scrappy attitude that got us to Stanford, not the matching windbreakers and kit bags of our opponents. Plus I don't like braggarts.

On a final note...living in a rugby house provides me with the opportunity to have a great number of rugby related discussions. I'm thinking of adding a little housemate topic at the end of each blog or something of the sort. This week I just wanted to comment on how it seems like as you get older rugby takes more out of you. Not just 'cause you're getting older but also to some degree because you're doing more of the right thing on the pitch and with more pace or aggression. It could also be positional. I live with one of my flankers and she is a freaking train wreck after games and practically lost it today when one of rookie wingers teased her about being a contact weary today. Meh...little ramblings.

Incidentally...I'm not getting a lot of traffic but it's coming from interesting places. So rock on fellow ruggers.