HAIL, PELICUS!
GAME TONIGHT
Would you like to see a good match this evening? The Old Gaels will be playing Duenas from Argentina at 7 PM in Orinda.
The game will be at the Orinda Sports Fields just north of Highway 24 on Camino Pablo. Jordan Bruno will referee. Matt Hetterman is one AR – wanna be the other?
REFEREES NEEDED DECEMBER 8
We need three or four refs this coming Saturday, including one in Chico and one in Humboldt.
December 15 is covered. Thanks to the even dozen refs who are available.
GAMES DECEMBER 1
Baracus over-thirty 30 – BARACUS under-thirty 62 Referee: Eric Rauscher
TJs from club
I woke up Saturday morning to pouring down rain. Great, a good soaking day, and I wasn't really looking forward to it.
The game had been moved from a grass field to an synth turf field, Franklin Park in SF. As I got to the SF side of the bridge, the rain let up, and it did not start raining again until after the last period of play.
This game is their annual "old boys" vs young whipper-snappers. The game was played in five 20 min periods, with time for re-adjusts in between. The final score does not do justice to the level of play early on. Period by period the score line ran
10/22/27/30/30 and 14/21/31/43/62. As can be seen, the first couple of periods were pretty close, but young legs are a real asset towards the end.
Once again youth won out over beauty. The old boys displayed a better feel for play and savvy of the game, but feeding the ball out to the young backs made the difference.
One interesting thing was two drop kicks by the old boys. It is not very often you see one in a game let alone two, and both were set up and thing of beauty to watch. There was a lot of chatter by both sides. If it had been a regular season game I think I would have clamped down on it, but it wasn't mean-spirited, mostly just banter among friends.
Maritime Academy 26 – ALUMNI 36 Referee: Bruce Ricard
A lot of players were on campus to play this game. About 50 students, and 25 alumni. The game started under a light shine, which stopped pretty quickly to let the backs play their game.
The alumni scored the first try of the game after their left prop got tackled 2 feet from the goal line, and reached this line with the ball in a beautiful single movement. After that I believe that only back tries were scored, which is not that surprising when you know how this team plays.
The game was pretty balanced, but the students went to the break with a 9 point benefit. (21 - 12)
Both teams came back on the field with the energy to win the game, and both teams scored early in the half. At the beginning of the last quarter, the students were leading 26-24.
The coaches told me at the beginning of the game that the alumni were old and out of shape. I was expecting the students to kill the game in the last 20 minutes, but the alumni found the energy to finish the game, and scored 2 more tries to take the lead for the first time 10 minutes before the end, and to finally win the game. Final score 36 - 26.
The new players of the team wanted to play some more rugby to get experience, so a second 25-minute half game was organized between those players as the rain started to fall. They for sure got experience playing under wet conditions.
Stanford men: WHITE 34 – Cardinal 29 Referee: John Coppinger
On the very dry oasis of Steuber Rugby Field in the middle of a very drenched Northern California, the White side held on to overcome the Cardinal side 34-29 in a preseason inter-squad match. Lots of running and a great way to start the season. I only had to reset the scrum once for lapsing into the old engagement sequence.
Stanford women: White – Cardinal Referee: Bob Polito
No score reported. The ref said he had fun.
RAIN-OUTS:
San Jose State – Opponent
Seconds: San Jose State – Opponent
NO REPORTS RECEIVED:
Santa Rosa – UC Davis Referee: Matt Hetterman
Seconds: Santa Rosa – UC Davis Referee: Giles Wilson
St. Mary's – Vacaville Referee: George O'Neil
GROWING THE GAME
A level one referee course was taught at Bellarmine in San Jose on Sunday, with 56 students in attendance. People from elsewhere always think your scribe is exaggerating when he says we have courses with such numbers.
There’s something about the first week in December: we taught one with 45 students last December 4 at Campolindo.
In line with that, I spent Saturday at the Los Gatos youth team’s first practice with my grandson. This club was founded by Chris Fisher two years ago. Now it has almost 200 members. This is just a reflection of what’s happening all over Pelicanland, and elsewhere.
Encourage everyone who loves the game to take up a whistle from time to time. Absent easy cloning of existing referees, this will be the only real solution to our growing problem.
HAIL, PELICUS!
For the Senate
Pelicus Scriptoris
