Tamaki Game 5 - Xcelento

We played a sturdy team - brave enough to show up with just handful of guys plus a girl. The girl was probably an older sister, judging by the way she bossed the dudes around. We only had seven ourselves, but we seemed fitter than they are overall (including Ops). With that, we won 6-3.

We started off playing incredibly pateintly, and bided our time long enough for Kerhan to receive a longball from Chris. He stepped back in dragging his guy for Chris to slice through with a late cut. They starred a laughing hyena on their team who thought it was funny that we scored. They replied with a quick try, a backdoor that exposed Kerhan's lazy defending. It was their star player who went through: that laughing hyena who giggled all the way to our line. But that was the last time he laughed.
To cover our earlier mistake almost, Chris sent another long ball to Kerhan for him to step through to score quickly in reply.

Unfortunately for them they made alot of forced passes and gave us lots of attacking opportunities, some of which we handled well. David gassed his man on the outside to score one, Ops set Nick a beautiful ins move and Kerhan caught them napping with a quick tap to stroll in. Can't remember the sixth try. It was a good natured game for the most of it - Sean even got a fair heap of man-love from the other team.

Their hyena on the other hand seemed a little frustrated, taking on our team on his own with his searing dummy scoops. He ran like a cheetah and earned them two good tries from them - one to their older sister who worked harder than most of her brothers in their team all game.

Lesson to be learnt: Sort out our mirrors for the scoops

The Special Ops machine: creating superstars

As some may know, we have had a player named Daniel in our team. He's booted off to Taiwan recently and joined a rugby team there and plays for the wing. No doubt using the skills he gained from his time with us, he's now taken his team to the finals and won - and scored the match winning try.


An extract from is his diary:


taiwan is good, our rugby team (national taiwan university) just won the taipei city championship, where i scored the decisive winning try in the final. burnt off 2 guys on the wing to go on and step 2 more others and score under the posts, in a much like christian cullen fashion. :) then some idiot (don't know who) broke our trophy lol, the little man at the top broke off, if it were spec ops i'd immediately blame martin, but my team has no martin so i don't know who it could be. links to photos of me playin rugby here, let me know what you think..http://www.pbase.com/kspage/2007_tpiccc_1 (in this game we owned the other team like 50-5)http://www.pbase.com/kspage/2007_tpiccc_4 (this was the final of the tournament where i scored the winning try in like the last 5 minutes)

On another note:

Rugby players get naked in a New Year's Eve rompSTAFF WRITER Sunday, Jan 02, 2005, Page 3
"All this naked playing on the lawn looks so natural to me. I'm deeply moved. I myself want to take off my clothes and join them."
unnamed female spectator of nude rugbyMore than 20 members of the National Taiwan University (NTU) rugby team celebrated the New Year Friday night in their unique way -- playing rugby naked.
The rugby team, formed by NTU students and alumni, was established in 1946 and is one of the oldest rugby teams in the country. Team members are mostly professionals -- professors, tycoons, doctors, judges, prosecutors and lawyers.
The rugby fanatics caused a sensation by playing rugby nude to celebrate the new millennium; since then it has become a New Year tradition.
"At first, we only wanted to try it once," said team captain "The Wall" (牆壁).
"But it felt fantastic to play rugby with our clothes off. So we decided to make this an annual tradition," he said.
With temperatures in Taipei plummeting to 7oC on New Year's Eve, team members, along with their wives and children, arrived at the campus at about 11:30pm. As the countdown to welcome 2005 began, the teammates took off their clothes while the spectators screamed, laughed and applauded.
"This is the coldest New Year's Eve [in six years]," a member said.
But he was still intent on maintaining the tradition.
"All this naked playing on the lawn looks so natural to me," said one woman who had been invited to the event for the first time. "I'm deeply moved. I myself want to take off my clothes and join them."
Since a student at Chang Gung University was punished by that school's administrators for streaking on campus in June, to avoid trouble the rugby team decided not to allow student members to take part in the naked frolic.
The team practices at NTU at 3pm every Saturday. All rugby lovers are welcome to join in. This story has been viewed 21089 times.

As alot of us view this website at work, I felt it was better to keep the nude photos of Daniel out of it.

Okahu Game 6 - Westmere Wanderers

Their team was a no show today, no doubt in fear of our abilities, so we won by default: 5-0

Tamaki Game 4 - 4Show

We played 4Show, who showed up with a team also in red uniform, and also as random seeming as ours: A mixture of whiteys and polys, and a mixture of ages - many of whom were young. One kid there must have been 8 - his step was bloody good though and he does it with a T-shirt would have been too big for even Ops to put on. Oh, and he didn't wear shoes either - these kids on the streets nowadays - all stars in the making (except for our team hobo Richard, because he's living in the office not the streets now).

Anyway we pulled out a good performance and won 7-3, with several more tries that could have come.

In no particular order: Kerhan ripped an intercept like a seagull near their line for an easy one; Dean did a breakdancer's dive to get a strange quickie try; David on the wing was marked by the little kid - and took a bullying advantage of him (and gave it for Dean's next score); Nick L parted their defensive line by spitting a dummy without actually faking a pass; we did an effective Two's drive for Nick L to walk over; Dean's Sonic the Hedgehog acceleration put someone on wing to score and David got another one somehow - probably by hogging the ball.

It was a good boost for team morale and we're starting to get those Two's working (as well as teamwork).

I wasn't watching when they scored their tries.

Lesson to be learnt: Its easier to win when playing against children.

Okahu Bay - Comp Game 2

We played the All Drunks. Actually we all played like drunks. Lots of dropped balls. The ball we used was pumped up to look like a basketball and its grip was like that of Jono's new mo: bare and smooth. Anyway, we beat this clearly rugby-converted social team 5-1, even with a ref too lazy to call half the penalties, or put his shirt on properly for that matter.

We opened up with a nice cut from Dean, and putting it through the hands through Stu, Sean was sent in for an easy try - a good way to impress his girlfriend who finally showed up to support him! Dean then opened a can of whoopass and stole one of their passes and wheeled the length of the field to to score an intercept try that would make Habana proud.
Stu later shot his man too early (under poor instruction from team mates) and they ran through that gap to score. That got us going and we soon got sick of trying out Two's driving pattern (which we WILL get right, sooner or later) and we just stuck to what we knew: do three ups then give the balls to our middle operators. We scored two tries with simple Quickies, and in between those Sean (for the first time ever) broke the line with a scoop and (for the first time ever?) got the pass out to Jono to score.

Amidst all this were some real bullshit play from the other team - but I said that I'd try to keep these posts positve.

Lesson to be learnt: Mimic this score line every time and we'll win every game.

Tamaki Game 3 - Galaxy

Against what is (or was) known to be one of the top touch clubs around, we went here a lil nervous. This game became a reverse of last week's match where they took us on with 6 players only and won 6-2.

They played a controlled game with very straight driving patterns. We played a game that rarely reached their five meter lines. There's a team out there called the meter-eaters. We could have called ourselves the meter-wasters as we took forever to recycle our ball. The ref played a lenient game, letting them get away with passing the ball at us and restarting the count. He let us get away with some terrible ball planting. Kerhan angled planted so badly he was almost facing backwards. Perhaps its not a penalty when you're so angled that you're parallel to the try lines.

Good work from wring-in Daniel for trying to create something everytime he was on the field. He set Chris up for an easy try with a simple scooper's run. Later in the game Nick L scooped too. Heading down the open-side direction moe-Joe cut too soon leaving him with half the width of the field with no support players. Luckily he found someone to give it to eventually.

Their tries were sharp - nothing lucky or flukey. Several other times they threatened to score quite easily against us. Nonetheless we are definitely improving as a team. Not long ago these guys would have washed us out with a bigger margin.

Lesson to be learnt: Do what Daniel does.

Okahu Comp Game 1 - Ginyu Force

The flood gates have opened. Competition rounds at Okahu started this week for us and there's no more messing around. Alas we lost 5-3.

The ref to his credit was much better than last week's wanker and the Ginyu Force were a whole new team this time round. They ran hard yards and defended like war heroes. Maybe it was no co-incidence that one of their players wore an army cap and the other looked like a Taliban? Like us, they also starred a token white guy. To our credit we kept up with their tempo.

Their five tries were smartly constructed: The first two were off quickies and they simply yoga-dived too low for our ungraced backs to bend. Their next came off poor mirroring on our behalf, followed by an "Ins" in behind Sean's arse that would have made every homosexual grab at their own arses in sodomized disbelief. Their final to seal the game was through our terrible cornering leaving poor Dean cross-eyed marking two of their guys.

Their tries were constructed - but ours were identical and individual: left to the solo efforts of Chris, Lau and Dean off their quickies diving through a parted defensive line. It left their men falling at their heels.
Its a pity though, we blotched three tries. After a slicing their line open, Dean set us up with an open try line and three players to for Chris to choose to pass to from dummy. He picked Sean, who caught the ball like a vollyball spiker. Chris later broke their line again running like bomberman does. He passed it to Richard who fumbled it after getting too excited about his try scoring opportunity. Finally, Chris (is there a pattern here?) ran another good dummy run and gave it to Nick B who was open - it was a high pass even for a tall guy and he couldn't quite grab it.

Good game, good ref, and a lot of respect for the other team.

Game review - Tamaki Game 2

If you weren't here, you missed out big time. This was the Christopher Viravuth Lim show, and Wha Kare was the audience. We showed up with only six players and played against a pretty structured team that had its sub boxes looking full. Sean, Jimmy C, David, Nick and Kerhan served their purpose - to hold out Wha Kare team from scoring and to give the ball to Chris to weave his magic.



His first try was a whopper: receiving a poor pass he slipped through two players using his mouse-running-into-its-hole style of running.

His second try was a double-whopper, it happened by a huge turn from his running angle - some call it a step. This was too good to be called a step.

His third try was a double whopper with "this is for you Louisa" written all over it, a change in pace - simply by changing gears from running fast to running faster.



Wha Kare scored three good tries against us - but somehow we got a fourth try which no one knew about... so we won 4-3.



Lesson to be learnt: Disregard previous lessons regarding bringing the whole team down. Just bring Chris down and five other players.

Game Review - Okahu Bay game 3

The final grading game- we were up against the Ginyu Force, or was it the Force Ginyu? Sheesh I left the game feeling very confused thanks to the referee: Are you on when he tells you that you are - only for him to tell you that you were off? Or is a forward pass okay, and is having a ball thrown at your chest called playing the ball, and the big question - is a touch a NO TOUCH?

Our team left Lloyd Elsemore because we were sick of useless refs that worship Wayne Barnes in their wet dreams. We wanted refs who knew the rules: deviation, rolling, and that our team is always right. Why do we have to work so hard to score four tries - thanks to some David "what the hell is going on" Lau magic stepping, a lucky intercept, a penalty try, and a dummy scooper?

Lesson to be learnt: play to the ref - luckily for us, he was make some poor decisions for the other team too.

Game Review - Tamaki Game 1

On a wet day we played The Heat, with some of their players young enough to wet their pants in bed. Yet again we only had a few of our guys, but BIGUPS to our wring-ins Daniel and Adam for beefing up our numbers to 7. Somehow, the game went wrong, and we lost it 6-4 to a team that dived hard into the slippery turf to stop our tries - many of them fingertips on skin hairs...

We on the other hand were less committed on defence, and they bombarded us with dummy scoopers and other stupid things like that which scored 6 tries. They obviously wanted to win more than we did. Maybe that had to do with their neighborhood - tough times growing up in Panmure, as Jules which testify. If these players lived anything like she did when she stayed out there, they'd be sleeping in a car garage fighting it out with all their siblings all night for who would get the floor to sleep on. Yeah, that's probably why they won...

Lesson to be learnt - as with game 1! Bring the whole bloody team down!!!!

Game review - Okahu Bay 2 - Bled Dogs

Score 6 - 5 Win

Players: Chris, Nick, Sean, Stuart, Martin, Ops, Leeroy, David

Before the game there was a bitta panic, as our 15 strong team had been whittled down to 6 for the day, but with Ops bringing Leeroy, and Martin finally figuring out that the season had started, it brought us to a sweet 8 players.

Now...the game started Really well for us, when these promo ppl started handing out free Poweraid bottles to us. David managed to scavenge away 6 of em, the thief. The magic formula musta had the placebo effect, as our confidence was running high in the first few minutes. Evidence is one of David's tries with a HUGE step off the left foot, that had the opposing player falling on his ass.

The Bled Dogs weren't too bad, after we'd get a try, they'd get one back, so it was always a one try difference. They also musta been short on players, or we just tired them out, cos they bought on some of their unsuspecting female supporters. In the end we managed to stay one ahead of them, which is a good first win for the Okahu Comp.

Highlights of the match:
- Davids awesome left step, tried it once and didnt work, then his second go a second later left the opposition on the floor
- Martins awesome catch. Typically Martin catches the ball in his groin region, as he did today, but this pass was a massive cross field pass! Well done to Martin
- Chris' awesome dive touch. Chris dived and managed to clip the players heel. If not for that, it woulda been a sure try