The last week of the adventure

The bittersweet week has arrived. The excitement of going back home mixed with the sadness of leaving what has been your home for the past six weeks. As this week has progressed toward our last game of the season, I've been more porous when it comes to learning new things at training. I've been privileged to be working Peter deVilliers every week doing scrumming technique, skills on explosiveness and downright "man tests" where your will is the only thing that is left after the exercise. Tonight is the last training session and I'm excited to see what will transpire. Yesterday I did something I've always wanted to learn how to do: went surfing. The boss at Cubana is a hug surf fan and every so often likes to treat his employees to a day out in the sun and surf. As we neared the beach, I asked how high the chance of a shark attack would be. My boss replied "There hasn't been an attack in over 60 years in this area. Now you can look at it two ways: that it's overdue, or that it's a pretty safe spot." Always the optimist, I decided to go with the latter perspective. With my wetsuit on and my 10 ft longboard in hand, I hit the waves....more like the waves hit me. I took a couple straight to the face and came out of the water spitting salt. After a brief instruction lesson from the boss, I soon figured out what worked and what didn't. Not only was the activity physically draining by wrestling with mother nature, but it was also mentally exhausting. Fall, get up, fall, get up, crouch, ride for a second then fall. I eventually worked up to where I could stand a couple of times before the day ended. All in all, it was an awesome experience and I look forward to going again. The rest of the final week looks to be filled with work, games, and leaving celebrations.

Cheers,

Josh

Throwing stones

Dealing with dirty players is a part of playing this elegantly violent sport. Sometimes dealing with rowdy fans also plays a role. The combination of both rude fans and dirty players only makes playing the game that much harder. While the intensity can come to a boil at times, we all play rugby for the passion and the joy we get from giving everything we have physically for 80 minutes. That joy and passion turned to frustration and anger this past weekend as we played the SK Walmers. From the opening kickoff we all could tell that this would be a more "physical" team than we've played the past few weeks. Fists, fingernails, cleats assaulted us as we continued to try and play our style of rugby. Aside from the usual trash talk of the team, some jeering is usually expected from the opposition's fans. Jeering came in the form of rude hand gestures, racial slurs, and throwing stones. Regardless of race, religion, or color, the attitudes displayed by the team and their supporters were shocking and embarrassing to the sport of rugby. We ended up tying 9-9 at the end of the day and sometimes tying is worse than losing because the end result says that you were no better than your opposition. We know we played better than they did but the score didn't show and that's what hurts the most.

Cheers,

Josh

Sometimes your best just can't cut it.

Losing sucks. But losing when you know you didn't give everything you had sucks even more. Thank goodness that didn't happen yesterday. While the score may not reflect the actual closeness of the game, we know gave everything we had. Did we make mistakes? Sure, who doesn't in a game? But we came together and kept on fighting.

This past week at training I had another opportunity to have a technique session with Peter DeVilliers. I find it amusing how I've flown thousands of miles to learn about the importance of two inches. In the scrum, quickness is everything. We may look blocky and clumsy (I'm not saying we aren't) but get us in a scrum, and we'll be just as quick as any makeup wearing back. The scrum basically works in three basic stages: 1) On "engage", be the first prop across the mark (the invisible "line of scrimmage" which is about two inches away from your face) 2) Have all 8 forwards push as one against the opposition's 8 forwards. 3) Push the other team back and laugh while you do it. You only get to laugh at the other team when you first beat them to those two inches. Once that is done, give everything you have until the ball goes out to the backs where they will almost always knock it forward and the whole process repeats itself. (NOTE: If you ever tell a back that, they will lie through their shiny teeth and tell you I was wrong but backs are never to be trusted. Especially with important things like chainsaws, your beautiful daughter, anything shiny, etc etc.)

As the week progressed, it seemed Aaron(miss you boet) took the good weather with him back to the states. Rain, rain, wind, and more rain were all that we saw through the week. So much so that Thursday's training was cancelled due to the crazy weather. Things weren't looking so bright for the weekend. But we were shown that rugby truly is the game played in Heaven because yesterday was absolutely gorgeous. The Sun came out to watch but was respectful enough to leave some clouds around so that we would be able to stay warm without overheating. Mountain breezes came by to say hello at all the right times. We couldn't have asked for better weather (we should've asked for a win instead). I started for the second team and played the whole match. I was looking forward to showering and sitting down for a bit but I soon found out my shower would have to wait. I was called up to sub for the first side. With fifteen minutes left in the game, they put me in. The pace of the game was exponentially quicker than the one I just finished and I was forced to play catch up for a minute or two. Once I settled, it was business as usual: Scrum, ruck, tackle, run, punch (shhh). The first side ended up losing as well but they gave everything they had as well. All in all, a hard fought day with a bitter taste left in our mouths.

I'm hoping to try and see a bit more of the Cape before I leave in two weeks but we'll see how that goes.

Cheers,

Josh