It was a dark and stormy day …… well thats a load of cobblers. In reality it was far worse , sunny , hot and humid and generally the kind of day for sitting about and having a few cold ones. More like a setting for Conrads ” Heart of Darkness ” than a game of rugby.
Our unpaid scribe had already advised he would not be there to help defend the Fortress as he just had to attend some sort of nuptial event on the Island – an unbelievably lame excuse to go and do research on the ‘ cheekiness factor ‘ of sundry Island brews of IPA ? We got over this flagrant dereliction of duty and already had a plan to replace the greatest conceder of penalties with any number of serious contenders in this category. To everyones acute consternation however , said scribe , magically appeared out of the heat haze replete with bionic legs wrapped in padded steel. This of course resulted in total confusion until Nick announced that he really was not here and that he was playing for SOBs. He immediately donned a very ugly gold coloured shirt, at this point we totally ignored him rejoicing in the fact he may do more damage to SOBs than us. (was this his cunning plan ?) .
It was something like ” Field of Dreams ” with Snowcaps appearing out of the humid shrubbery in droves , including some guys we had not seen in years , Fredrick Couton, Shane Cable and some who we had never seen before and did not even know existed. We probably had 2 complete teams available.
The White Rock separatists however seemed a little short on numbers , even after recruiting Nick. Perhaps many of them decided to stay and play sand castles on Crescent Beach and drink tea. After some delay as result of Snowcaps having to persuade half the guys present in Snowcaps colours that they could not start and would have to wait their turn, the game got underway . Carl was heard reciting Teutonic poetry to no one in particular .
It was total shock & awe for the first 20 minutes with Snowcap forwards rampaging at will through SOBs defence . Dazza , Renaud , and Frenchy made SOBs lives miserable. Renaud going head down straight at them and Dazza suddenly screaming across the field pretending to be a centre. We scored almost at the first play of the game with Joe easily smashing through their defence . Shortly after one of our rookies , Matt Graham , came in from full back and took a pass from the winger to touch down in the corner. Before the whistle was blown for the first period , Frency decided that he needed to show Renaud ( who is not really a Frenchman at all but a Belgian – call me Hercule? ) , that anything the Belgians can do, the French can do better – head down charge , broke a few would tackles and scored under the posts. Viva La France !
At the break the boys in gold shirts went into a huddle and whilst nothing was actually audible, the ‘ blah ‘ word was used frequently , perhaps though not in the right combinations. Craig Griffiths decided that if he could not get a full game with Snowcaps he may as well “take the gap” and join Nick. A somewhat different game at the restart and we now know why one should not mess with the VPD – ferocious tackling by SOBs and their two Northern recruits held us off the scoreboard. SOBs decided also to keep the ball close to the forwards and attacked round the scrum . Excellent defence by Snowcaps – Carl , Kevin & Jaymore all making big stops and Kevin leaking red liquid from his nose are all worthy of commendation. Sobs came close to crossing the line on several occasions. Sadly another of our rookies . Harley , appeared to have sustained a broken arm – we hope he is OK but would appreciate an update ( Sergio ? ).
After the half we tried a new tactic – kick over their forwards ( this of course assumes that we knew how to kick ). Shane at standoff was partially successful in this endeavour and when the kicking actually worked we looked dangerous and another try was run in by Robocop.
The final 20 started after more of the ” blah ” words from SOBs. They managed to disrupt out lineouts
successfully ( no doubt coached by the two Northern recruits ) and for a change of tactics they spun the ball wide ( Nick claims this was his pass ) whilst we were concentrating on close in defence – their outside centre ran round our shortened line and passed off to SOBs oldest player ( Ian Stagg ) to ground then ball. Enough of that – we started to run at them and confused them with occasional random kicks ahead ( confused us as well ) but we capitalised with another try , I believe scored by Craig Williams. After finally figuring out that we had the fire power in backs Robocop executed another scything run and ran totally round the SOBs winger and full back for the last score of the game ( our 6th try ) .
Joe from Fiji was noted to be sitting in the shade on the far side of the field for the last 20 and when asked why , simply smiled and passed comment on the weather – cant argue with that.
Thanks to John for the work with the whistle – judging by the lack of voluble complaint from either side , guess he got most of the calls right and was fair in ignoring sundry misdemeanours from both sides. Thanks to Chef Jim for another stellar meal. Thanks to Jan for running the bar. Thanks also to the Snowcaps who played for SOBs.
As a footnote , SOBs gave their man of the match award to Nick ( another example of blatant bribery )
which seemed odd as he played for SOBs …. Nick did however redeem himself by easily winning the beer chug off with the SOB guy. Clearly the frequent practice sessions with any kind of IPA ( cheeky or otherwise ) is now paying dividends .
A great defence of the Fortress but don’t be fooled – it was an abnormally low turn out by SOBs and they will be waiting for us when we go down to White Rock later in the season.
As already mentioned by Nick, this week Snowcaps travel to Kelowna – Kent has already signed on and both Mike J and Jim have agreed to chaperone him. Kent’s long suffering wife has also agreed to go and keep an eye on him – apparently she has trust issues after last year.
Lets get a full team up to there to take on the Monks of Mission Hill.
Nick’s ghost writer.