Catalina 2009

by John Langley

Catalina was a success again this year. The Snowcqps were bouyed up by players from Abbotsford, Seattle, Portland and Alaska. They say a tie game is like kissing your sister. Well we did that several times as although we went undefeated we didn't win either. All three games were tied. The first game was against the United States Marines who play rugby as if it was war. They were big young and mean. They run like tanks going over a hill..Originally we weren't supposed to play them but our guys wanted revenge from the loss last year.  It was a hard played effort with caps coming back to tie the game on the last play.  Jim Mossop crashed over to even the score.  It was a good game of rugby and I think in a longer game our skill level would make us victorious but in a short game it was close as the score would indicate. 

The other games were similar. Some of our guys found beer more to their liking than water and despite a severe reprimand from the Godfather capitan Ken Robinson, it continued albeit somewhat to a lesser degree. The caliber of rugby at this tournement has really improved over the years and despite the state of the field, that has about as much grass as many of the players have hair.  The over 50's game was also a tie as my kicking that resulted in a try last year did again but for the wrong team. Two great tries by Jim Mossop pulled us even and it was a fair result.  We could have won if we hadn't dropped the ball and make a stupid kick but what the hell a tie in the over 50's isn't a bad result. 

Off the field we were great.  The lumberjack led by Kent, adonas, Handel was a big hit at the Sand trap and the Marines did a great job with their rugby songs. On Sunday we took over the Beach bar and sang almost every rugby song ever written with a fair audience that seemed to be appreciative. Larry Sunnell was so moved he decided to streak into the water, accidently, of course forgetting that he forgot his trunks. The water was quite cold so there wasn't much, if anything to see anyway. The smiling female manager gave Larry a severe reprimand with a smile on her face and threatened to cut us off. DubAar promised to stop stalking her if she served us so the drinks continued. Big Martin, the bobby, also kept us entertained and presented the annual bobby helmet to Cam. Alaska will now have a new sheriff complete with a new style hat! Catalina has become the cruise ship capital of the south as the ships that couldn't tie up in mexico all visited Santa catalina. The pictures kindly donated by Andrew Whitechapel are worth a look and show the beauty of this magic island.  

Finally, congrats to Bob Weston hitting 80! What colour shorts are those???