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.