Last weekend saw Ross playing in a touch-rugby tournament. It was an extremely hot day (sweat was dripping off Mel's face while she sat, not moving, in the shade!) but this didn't deter the "All-Stars" one bit. Every year, the same team wins the tournament (The mighty ANZAC's) and no one can really give them a run for their money.
The All-Stars were a bunch of strangers (essentially) that were thrown together and largely met for the first time on the day of the tournament. Naturally, everybody wrote us off as massive underdogs, and didn't even expect us to make the play-offs. We, however, had different ideas. There was a (not so silent) belief that we could go ahead and win this tournament, purely through the surprise element.
We met the almighty ANZAC's in the pool stages (our second game), and put on a poor display. By half time we were already 3-0 down and were nursing heavily bruised egos. At the break there were some inspiring words shared by all three of our self-nominated captains, and we headed into the second half determined to do better. It seemed to work, because we conceded only one more try in the match, leaving the scoreline reading 4-0.
We didn't lose another match (although some were tough battles), and clawed our way into the final by beating the very passionate (and filthy) French team, le Blues, 2-1 in the semis. They were the team who used to always lose to the ANZAC's in the final.
Going into the final, there was a sense of defeat amongst many of our team... This meant that an already tough game was going to be that much tougher! We played much better than in the pool stages, and our defence was solid. Their surprise and concern at not having scored yet was becoming more and more evident as the first half went on, and we thought that we were going to go into the break at 0-0. However, late in the half, the ANZAC's slipped through and scored the only try of the half. At half time we were shattered! We looked across to our opposition, and those gym-bunny boytjies had barely broken a sweat (not really, but they definitely looked better than us!).
After the first half, however, there was a renewed hope in our team, and that belief that we could cause the upset was back. We went into the second half firing on all cylinders, and continued with our solid defence. We even had the ANZAC's pinned on their own try-line for some considerable periods. Unfortunately we just couldn't breach their defences, and were tiring ourselves out in our efforts to do so. The crowd started getting behind us, and we could feel our efforts raise once again. We could do this!! We made some breath-taking breaks, and ran some pretty professional lines, but our last pass was always somehow impeded by our impenetrable opposition.
At last there was a break which counted. A stunning draw, pass, loop and skip pass to the wing which left the defence in absolute tatters and complete awe of the level of skill and accuracy of the move. Sadly it was the ANZAC's who performed this piece of rugby brilliance, and the final whistle blew shortly after. The epic final was over, and the better team won. However, this year our team certainly made them work hard for their 2-0 victory.
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| The All-Stars |
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| Saki - Ross's lucky draw prize. |
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| A beautiful ending to a fantastic day. |
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