Campbells rule soup-er Saturday II

(CRFU): The second Super Saturday of the touch rugby season showed us who can be considered favourites for places in the season ending play-offs. The weather forecast said it would be “heat lamp-hot” but, in truth, there is hot and there is “surface-of-the-sun-sizzling”! Wearing asbestos flip-flops your reporter traversed the lava-like surface of the South Sound rugby ground to the shade to watch a day of white-hot rugby. (Photo by Caroline Deegan: Tammy Fu of Zolfo Cooper lines up her opponent)

DIVISION 2

At the centre of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole, a phenomenon which has such a strong gravitational pull that stars millions of light years apart are affected by its lure. They start to spin around this focal point as if interstellar space itself dances to the tune of this object of immense size. It goes by the name of Sagittarius A.

All of which brings me nicely to the match between Campbells and the Heineken Light Maidens.  Now, I am not saying that Peter Arthur De Vere is supermassive or that he is of galactic proportions but in this game he most certainly was the hub around which the stars of Campbells rotated and shone like diamonds. He is almost a Sagittarius (missing out by just six days), and his middle name does begin with “A” so maybe it was written in the heavens that this fellow would be the big hole into which the Maidens hopes of an unbeaten season would be cast.

Shining like the burning sun overhead in his incandescent orange shirt and socks, he pulled the strings, called the moves, and made the plays that gave Campbells their richly deserved 2-0 win. A dead ringer for a cardboard-box robot and with all the mobility to match he used not speed of foot but speed of thought to out-fox the foxy Maidens. Time after time he punished the Maidens defence on their own five metre line. He sold more dummies than Mothercare, each one slightly more obvious and therefore outrageous than the last. How Campbells scored only two tries baffled the crowd who gasped at the spectacle in front of them? Bryan Little and Johnny Lewis made the winning scores. De Vere had a sublime game, a colossal match played by a colossus. He would have been chaired off the field at the final whistle if only his team could lift him.

However god-like he played with ball in hand it is good to know that this mere mortal has feet of clay. For every ying there is a yang; he is fleet-footed in attack, lead-footed in defence. As the Maidens pinged the ball around on the other side of the pitch, De Vere was backtracking at pace. Then, as if downed by a poison dart from an Amazonian Akuntsu tribesman he went “a” over “t” or rather head over heels in an inelegant heap. Ne’er but the faithful few would have noticed this cosmic collapse had it not been for the involuntary but voluminous chuckle from his somewhat-less-than-sympathetic teammate Wiki Hitchman. It drew the beady gaze of all upon the bleachers and a resounding cheer went up. To err is to be human and we like our gods to be fallible – stand up the newly-named Perseus A. De Vere.

Campbells topped off a soup-er day with a win over the Division’s form team Deloitte. “De Vere Does Deloitte” cried the crowd but it was Nick Quin, Marcus Cumber, Karen Hart and Wiki Hitchman who were in planetary orbit in this one scoring all the tries. A special mention must go to Alistair Lum who scored four tries and got the MVP award for the umpteenth time this season. Lum went onto get another MVP award as Deloitte won 4-3 against Broadhurst. If there was a Division 2 All-Star team picked at the seasons end his would be first name on the team sheet – well, A’s do comes first alphabetically don’t they?

The sporting drought is a curse that can cause a team to crumble under pressure. As time goes by, every near-victory can be turned into defeat through a lack of composure, confidence and conviction. It took the Boston Red Sox 86 years to win the World Series in spite of only American teams entering. Multi-billionaires Manchester City took 35 years and a bottomless pit of Saudi oil money to win a football trophy.  Even the mighty

Barcelona, whose name it seems is synonymous with sporting triumph, took 41 years between their first and second European title. For the honest and hardworking players of UBS it seemed that such a simple thing as a win in Division 2 was tantalizingly out of reach. Like Di Caprio vainly grasping for the outstretched arm of Winslet as he sank into the icy waters at the end of Titanic, UBS simply can not hold onto a lead in touch rugby. To say that UBS have struggled this year would be akin to saying that the good folks on Elm Street had a mildly troubling dream when Freddy Krueger came a-knockin’. Without a win all season they have diligently turned up, left everything on the field of play but gone home empty-handed if not entirely empty-hearted.  Hope springs eternal but let’s face it Eternity is a long time, a very long time indeed.

Their day started in typical fashion with a good performance against DMS, ultimately losing 4-7 due to a five try haul from Venassio Toketokevanua. Five tries and a triple word score of 105 in Scrabble make this guy the most valuable player in touch rugby. It was in their second game that the miracle finally happened. Playing Rawlinson & Hunter, UBS got their first win of the season by6-2. Such is the shocking nature of this result that Interpol may be looking into the spread-betting patterns across the Asian sub-continent gambling sites. Joanne Remillard, in her pre-match press conference was ebullient in her belief that victory was but a sniff away. Bizarrely, the feeling on the bleachers amongst the throng was that UBS could well pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat after all, given enough attempts, even a chimpanzee will write the complete works of Shakespeare. However, these animalistic comparisons give scant reflection to how UBS performed.

Playing with all the swiftness of an eagle on the wing, the ball handling of a sea-lion, the brazen cunning of a ching-ching, the ferocity of an angry hippo, and the knockabout joie de vivre of kittens playing with a ball of wool, UBS enjoyed their day in the sun. Try scorers included stalwarts Stuart Reed, Jimmy Aiken and Ben Ouelette but the real star was the team itself. I’d take my hat off to UBS only for fear of finding that darned rabbit under it.

Victories for Broadhurst, Harmonic and the Heineken Light Maidens all helped secure their places in the table. Island Heritage was unbeaten all day with good performances from Ruan van Vuuren, Brandon Smith, and Marvin Gordon.

Points for Walkers Blue Iguanas these days are as rare as the eponymously named reptile. Narrow defeats to Heineken Light Maidens and Harmonic seem to suggest that the have lost some of the early season swagger that racked up tries, wins and points at will. Maybe it is absences through injury or summer vacation but I believe they can turn it round before the season closes.

Rawlinson & Hunter achieved a worthy 3-3 draw against Island Heritage with Darren Gallant achieving the honour of buying a bucket of beer with a fine hat-trick of tries. At time of going topress it is not sure if the said bucket was purchased but if not then this will act as a timely reminder to his teammates.

DIVISION 1

The SteppingStones juggernaut just keeps on rolling. Like the 40-ton tanker truck in Steven Spielberg’s Duel there appears to be no stopping this inexorable force in its quest to smash the recent monopoly on the title held by Maples1. Having beaten their main rivals earlier in the season they dispatched Maples1 with all the chilling efficiency of a cross between Jason Bourne and The Terminator.

If it was Riley “cover model” Mullen who stabbed through the heart of Maples1, it was the trio of Karen Hart, Mags Patterson and Lisa Bird who twisted the knife to make the score 6-2. Maples1 will have to come up with a change of plan, a full team and a slice of good fortune if they are going to stop SteppingStones in their tracks.  SteppingStones then routed Dart 7-1 ensuring they sit on top of the table as we approach the end of the season. Rudolf “the red nose” Weder scored a fine hat-trick.

Maples1 beat their compatriots Maples2 6-1 in a one-sided affair. Jyoti Choi, Scott MacDonald, Chris Palmer and Jo Ziegler scored the tries as they secure second place in the table.

Whilst the top two stride on, the rest of the league is evenly matched and there were some cracking games. DART beat Trident Titans (3-2) with Simon Crompton proving too hot to touch; KPMG1 beat Maples2 (2-1) with Monty Montgomery kicking up a desert storm;

Angel Hawkins descended from on high to help Ogier beat KPMG1 (3-2), whilst Genesis Five Nations rolled backed the years with a fine 2-2 draw against the younger, fitter, faster Trident Titans. The star for Genesis was Roger Priaulx who, like a 200lb Zola Budd, ran bare foot all day long to claim a deserved MVP award to go with his two tries. In the Beginning there was Priaulx and he was Good.

Genesis Five Nations capped off a fine day with a 4-0 win over Ogier. Five Nations has to be the loudest team in touch rugby and at times their on and off-field vocal offerings to each other, the opposition and the referee were measured at a level akin to an orchestra of slightly de-tuned foghorns. Mick and Lisa Kehoe, the touch rugby husband/wife equivalent of Ozzy (creative genius) and Sharon (driving force) Osbourne scored three of the four with handy Andy Galloway chipping in for one.

DIVISION 3

In Division 3 it was business as usual for some. Zolfo Cooper had yet another two victories ( against Delta Force and Ernst & Young), whilst Queensgate Grizzles Old Fellas lost both their games. So far so normal. Tom “tractor-boy” Elliott is proving to be a real find this year with four more tries to his harvest of scores, whilst the Old Fellas’ have unearthed a try-scoring machine in Laura Edmonds. How she managed to find herself totally unmarked on her opponents try-line is still a mystery but she dotted the ball down with all the unbridled joy of a wild mare in a field full of stallions.

Credit Suisse put more points in the bank with a win over the Old Fellas, Delta Force and a draw against LIME. Stacey Ottenbreit used to laugh at her inability to score tries. Not any more. Three more on this day has given her a best scoring season ever. Her tries are like buses. You wait ages and ages for one and then three come along all at once.  But it is Johann Prinsloo whose eight-try haul for Credit Suisse as put them in contention for the play-off places. As swarthy as a pirate captain, he put the sword through Delta Force and made the Old Fellas walk the plank to a watery grave.

LIME had a strong showing on the day too. A commendable draw against Credit Suisse was followed with a win against GCM. Mark Woollard, the heartbeat of the team, the soul of the side deserves special praise. He won the MVP award with a stunning performance of decoy runs and black-ops undercover stealth moves. Although rarely got the ball he distracted the opposition long enough for teammates to take the spoils. It is the unsung heroes of a team that make them special and, having heard him sing karaoke, Woollard should remain as un-sung for as long as possible. He is special indeed.

KPMG2, GCM both secured winning points on the day and Ernst & Young earned a valuable draw. But what has happened to Delta Force? Early season brilliance has become de-railed as three defeats in one day have dented their seasons hopes. However, you don’t become a bad team overnight and with the return of some valuable players I am positive they will halt this slide.