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