"Veni, Vidi, Vici in Green Bay"
Well, I ended up car-pooling-sort of-to the game in Green Bay this past Saturday: My wife ended up coming with me. Seeing as my bride of almost 24 years(will be offically 24 next Tuesday, the 29th) had yet to even see me play rugby, it was a good excuse for a road trip. I have some pictures in this link to my facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?page=3&aid=2002423&id=1022643106
It was a little over a 4 hour drive to Green Bay. We ended up playing the game in Pulaski, just outside of Green Bay, because their regular field was a bit waterlogged. We lucked out in that there was no rain on Saturday, but the field was still pretty muddy and heavy. We ended up with kind of a mixed squad, with mostly B squad players, a handful of Old Boys, and a few A squaders. In spite of the muddy conditions, the game ended up being a try-fest. We won 44-36. Green Bay had quite a few players who did not make it into that game, so we played a mini game of two 15 minute halves and won that 20-5. I played the first half in both games.
It was a tough, but fair game. I got my bell rung a bit between getting a really sharp stiff arm from Green Bay's man of the match, their #8. He had red-hair cut into a Mohawk style and ran really hard. He broke a bunch of tackles on some nice runs. As I said, he gave me a really hard stiff arm, and then a few minutes later, I took a good blow to the head during a scrum, and after two such hits in less than a couple of minutes, it had me seeing stars-literally. I hollered over the sideline to see if our coach, Denny, could sub me out. "Can you make it another 5 minutes? It's almost half time and I'll sub you out then." I made it...a little rubbery-legged, but I made it. For me, it was a strange game. Two weeks previous, I had played 80 minutes, but between missing some training last week and having to short sleep on a couple of days, it REALLY affected me on Saturday: I was really knackered after the first half. I was able to recover enough to play the first half of the mini game. In the first game, I played Loose(on the left) Head prop. In the second game, I played tight-head(on the right) prop.
There was one scary point in the game, our hooker, "Squirrel", fell really awkardly out of a maul and hit head to ground really, really hard. His neck was hurting him in a big way. Up to that point, he was playing a super game. A few of our backs had been out partying the night before-and it showed with a number of knock ons and dropped balls that normally would not have happened with some of these guys when they come to the pitch with their A-game.
The games were played in a good spirit of sportsmanship. We had a really good time at the Green Bay team bar after the game. I made it a point to search out the Mohawked number 8 who had played so well against us and still had my head a little wooly. I came to find out that this young man had played with the US under 19 National team about 3-4 years earlier and was now working as a prison guard in the maximum security prison that is near Green Bay. You normally don't expect to find a player with those qualifications playing on a Divsion III side. Now I did not feel so bad about being left for road kill after trying to tackle this guy.
My wife had a good time at the game and the social. It was fun to have her along, too. The one thing about all of the driving, it gave us a LOT of time to catch up on things and just talk. I have to say though, that putting in about 9+ hours of driving and playing rugby left me really beat on Sunday.
One other good thing from the trip, was being able to stop at Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers,
to get some birthday gifts for my brother in law, Michael. I should explain a couple of things as background to this stop: 1 I am a Minnesota Vikings fan. 2 Being a Vikings fan means to hate the Packers. 3 For me to actually buy Michael something at the Packer Fan Shop is a testament to how much I like my brother in law. Making that purchase would be like my exchange student Rodrigo, a Sporting Lisbon fan, buying Benifca merchandise, or my friend Jean-Paul, a Marseille fan, buying Paris SG merchandise. I will say this about the Packers, that they are a really well-run organization-particularly when compared to the woeful managment that the Vikings have had the last (roughly) 30 years.
All in all, it was a great Saturday, and it was fun to finish off the spring season with another win by the Killer B's. I was talking with my brother today, and now he is thinking of wanting to try to play rugby this fall season. This mid-life crisis stuff is catching.
