Long afternoon at the Square
Jun. 25th, 2005 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chickenfeetToday the Nomads had a full slate of men's games against long time rivals the Toronto Scottish. This is a rivalry going back fifty years and there's even a cup for the winner of the most recent first team game. Despite the Scottish rather desperate efforts to strengthen their squad, including, it is said, advertising in Scottish newspapers (though why anybody would expect to find decent rugby players there anymore is beyond me), the form book suggested this should be a fairly easy run out for the Nomads.
By and large it was. The fact that we could dress something like 65 players for the three games while they looked to be struggling to find 40 suggested they had problems. On a hot afternoon, having to have guys playing two full games against teams that could use the maximum permitted number of substitutes was obviously going to be a problem. And so it proved.
In the third team game, by the end the Nomads were basically just catching the kick off and running it back for a score. It was 90+- to 10 when the ref blew it up early. The second team game wasn't a whole lot different. I think it finished up 83-0 but by that time had run out of fingers and toes. The first team game was, mercifully, more of a contest, especially as it was being televised. In fact, I was a bit worried when the Nomads were only 3-0 up at the half. I think there must have been a few well chosen words from the coach at the half because the boys looked a lot more focussed in the second half. They started to put some phases together and play in a way that made the most of our much faster backs. In the end it was a fairly comfortable 36-0 win with enough tries to secure a much needed bonus point.
So, Nomads are 5-0 going into the July break with just bonus points keeping us behind the Yeothugs but we haven't played them yet. It's definitely going to take rather more precision to get past them than I saw today.
By and large it was. The fact that we could dress something like 65 players for the three games while they looked to be struggling to find 40 suggested they had problems. On a hot afternoon, having to have guys playing two full games against teams that could use the maximum permitted number of substitutes was obviously going to be a problem. And so it proved.
In the third team game, by the end the Nomads were basically just catching the kick off and running it back for a score. It was 90+- to 10 when the ref blew it up early. The second team game wasn't a whole lot different. I think it finished up 83-0 but by that time had run out of fingers and toes. The first team game was, mercifully, more of a contest, especially as it was being televised. In fact, I was a bit worried when the Nomads were only 3-0 up at the half. I think there must have been a few well chosen words from the coach at the half because the boys looked a lot more focussed in the second half. They started to put some phases together and play in a way that made the most of our much faster backs. In the end it was a fairly comfortable 36-0 win with enough tries to secure a much needed bonus point.
So, Nomads are 5-0 going into the July break with just bonus points keeping us behind the Yeothugs but we haven't played them yet. It's definitely going to take rather more precision to get past them than I saw today.
