2009-05-16 - Newcastle Tournament
- Team composition
Captain: ??
Lesley-Anne, Freshy, Narinder, Ali
Charles, Doug, Olivier, Pierre, Rob
Click read more for result, photos, summary, etc.
- Result
To come...
- Photos
- Summary
Friday
The advance party, comprising of Rob, Lesley-Anne and Pierre in car one and Doug, Narinder and Ali in car two, set off from the Meadows in the early evening, travelling in convoy down the A68 stopping at the border for a break and a little pissing, sorry, passing practice.
As the convoy continued south, stomachs were rumbling in car two. Rumour had it that someone in car one had brought sandwiches! However, as we neared our destination, Narinder chatted up some locals in a bar in Sherburn to find the excellent Lucky House Chinese takeaway and the party dined in style at Rob’s folks’ place in the sleepy village of Shadforth. This was followed by a few entertaining rounds of Uno to decide who would do the washing up before retiring to bed where it was confirmed that contrary to expectation Narinder does not talk in her sleep. As he slept, Pierre dreamt of chance encounters with the fabled Geordie Fat Slags.
Saturday
Fortunately for us, Lesley-Anne’s Geordie accent was good enough to ask for directions to Percy Park RFC in North Shields (Rob’s chat is worse than usual at that time of the morning), where we met up with Olivier, Freshy and Charles who had set off from Edinburgh in the early hours of the morning.
After the obligatory warm up, tension was high (well, maybe just a little) for the big grudge match of the day against Captain Ali’s old team Oxford Touch. On paper Oxford had more experience, but on the day the Superhands settled into their game quicker, perhaps aided by Ali winning the toss (!), and our solid driving, spirited defence (12 touches on our line at one point) and superior awareness of the location of the try line were too much for them and the final score of 2-1 was almost as satisfying as seeing the big smile on Ali’s face.
Next up was Cambridge Hornets. In a very slick performance in bright sunshine, occasionally interspersed by the odd light shower to spice up the handling, Cambridge demonstrated why they went on to win the tournament as they pulled our defence from side to side and created overlaps, which they exploited mercilessly to run in 8 tries to nil. Despite the score it was a joy of sorts to watch the type of game we aspire to, being played so well and a challenge to defend against it.
In our third and final group game we were up against the host team Percy Park Pirates. We sensed that they were beatable, but in the end after a close run game we were unable to convert possession into scores and lost 4-1. Fortunately this fitted in with Pierre’s master plan as it meant we finished third in our group and faced fourth placed Perfect Motion in the Bowl quarter finals, rather than having to play in the top half of the draw for the Cup and the Plate.
After some lunchtime refuelling on excellent sausages and burgers from the cheeky chappies at the barbecue and the most artfully created cakes from the angelic but entrepreneurial little girl (thanks Charles), the Superhands faced up against Perfect Motion. Initial thoughts of an easy win against a team fielding a young lad of about twelve were soon quashed as he demonstrated a great step and good handling. The speed of one or two of their players challenged our defence, however our diesel off slider peppered with the occasional dummy switch continued to threaten and it was neck and neck at full time at 1-1, so we entered a slightly confusing ‘drop-off’ sudden death stage, where each team was reduced by one player every minute until one team scored. Eventually, down to three players, after some desperate play on both sides including a magnificent try-saving dive by Pierre they just managed to squeeze past our defence to make the decisive score.
This meant that our next game was against Stirling Touch in the Shield semi final. By this time, Stirling were down to only six players, however we were missing our female player of the tournament from the previous week, Lesley-Anne, so both sides had to dig deep. A very enjoyable game ensued with some excellent driving again providing a platform for slider based moves producing a very respectable 4-1 win putting Superhands through to the Shield final against another local side Sage.
Another close game ensued. Everyone worked incredibly hard but in the end with tired legs and a couple of injuries they just had the edge on us and pipped us 2-1, although how much the garish pink flowery shirts put us off our game was hard to judge.
After showering we headed to the bar for the presentations where we were all very proud to be honoured with the Sports-team-ship Award. With the tent put up (thanks Olivier, Narinder and Doug) and the carryout bought, the next big challenge was to persuade Freshy to stick around for the evening’s celebrations. Her solid defence that had been so effective earlier in the day was weakened by a couple of glasses of wine and soon collapsed under the persuasive onslaught. Our thoughts were with Olivier on the long drive home with Narinder.
The record of the remainder of the evening has been pieced together from photographic evidence and the vague disjointed memories of the participants and so may not be entirely based on fact. Safe to say that Superhands and Stirling Touch swapped their earlier rivalry for revelry with the former instigating bouts of ceilidh dancing, allegedly without music, causing the upturning of tables and drinks, and the latter educating all in the finer points of the last-one-to-put-a-random-body-part-on-the-table-drinks-two-fingers game. The only competition now was to see if our combined forces could outstrip the supply of red wine from the bar (and the carpark). The massed Superhands and Stirling choirs treated the other occupants of the bar to an undoubtedly hearty rendition of Flower of Scotland and late in evening the Superhands ‘Haka’ was performed by Doug to tumultuous silence. Pizza arrived at some point and a search party was sent out to find some missing persons before it had all been devoured. The search party promptly forgot the task in hand on the appearance of a full bottle of wine and a further search party had to be dispatched, but by this time there was hardly any slices left, especially not of the tuna and prawn one – not mentioning any names, Rob. Nobody can recall at what point in the evening Charles slipped quietly away, but it can’t have been particularly late as he was way too chirpy in the morning.
Sunday
There were rumours afterwards that someone may have been a little worse for wear in the early hours of Sunday morning but since there is no evidence of the red stain some report having seen or the conversation about the smell of one’s hair perhaps this was all just a crazy dream. It is quite certain however that nobody felt inclined to head out to buy some pineapple and strawberries to help Rob with his hangover.
After an excellent pub lunch at the Waggon Inn on the A68, during which almost as much soft drink was consumed as had been wine the previous night, everyone made it home safe and sound. All in all we’d had an excellent weekend both on and off the pitch. Fines went to Ali for wearing a Meerkat’s top and Rob for place-kicking a ball over the fence.
- A few post match comments
Pierre:
Just a quick email to say a big WELL DONE to everyone for yesterdays performance. Everyone worked so hard, it was beautiful. The results were just as good too, hard luck on a few small details but we all learned a lot.
Winning the sporting award is something we should be very proud of (I'm not sure I'd swap that prize for the bowl actually) ; we shall try and keep this attitude for all of our games. I will personally try and be a bit calmer / pleasant in my instructions on the field. Probably got carried away throughout the day.
Thanks to Lesley Anne for all the organising, to Olivier & Freshy for helping us oot, the drivers, etc.
Love you all!
Ali
I love you all too! I had the best weekend. Loved every minute :-)
Rob
On a weekend as good as that its hard to put your finger on what the best bit was:
- The chat, the Chinese and the Uno on friday,
- The first victory against Oxford,
- Beating Stirling,
- The getting smashed with the Stirling crowd and playing ridiculous drinking games,
- Or having a dance off with Dug.???
- Safe to say it wasn't the hangover yesterday morning.
Cheers for a superb weekend everyone.
Freshy
It was a brilliant weekend - thanks for persuading me to stay! I have to get up at 4.50am tomorrow to do the 12 mile run I didn't do yesterday morning, but you know what, I don't regret it for a second!
Olivier
I had a really nice day in newcastle. the tournament was great and I think the superhands team I played with on saturday really improved a lot compare to the last time I played with you. So good job! and thanks to the coach!!
next year challenge: after oxford this year, let's beat the cambridge guys!
Lesley-Anne
oooh yeah, well done to everyone! what a class weekend!
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Doug
A truly superhandifragilisticexpialidocious weekend indeed, which for me was rounded off by waking up on Sunday evening in a bath full of cold water.