Southerners Gold

What a Weekend of Tens action.
After numerous tough and well organized team training sessions (well, touch rugby) we entered the Bangkok 10's confident. Confident we would have fun, drink beer and score some sweet tries.

Saturday started well, Bob was running late, everyone was hung-over and Carl had passed out locking Sam out of his house...what are mates for? With the first game delayed by 45mins it gave our team time to arrive and step into our new kit.

Game 1: BANGKOK JAPANESE The game started well with Carl and Jay carving up. We won by a few tries and had some fun.

Game 2: The Singapore team "red dot bandits or something" were our next targets....I think. We went into this game thinking Singapore was only good for 2 things; getting Ultan out of Bangkok and clean streets. But they were a good side and before we new it we were losing. Their fly-half stepped me 3 times and they were also disallowed a penalty try when Kirk clearly pushed a guy over for stepping on his flash red shoes. We won through a try or penalty or something.

Game 3: Yohkahama were the last team on Saturday. I had a friendly reunion, their backrower picked up the pill, pushed me over and scored. He then stood up and said "hey is that you Reedy? Long time no see.' Thanks, I have had better reunions. Thankfully Jay and I held him up over the line later on and we won they match.

Saturday night. Most of us had a drink at the grounds, we had a fine session and a few laughs. Calum and Kirk decided they would hang out with the Jam Boys. At 4am Kirk rescued Calum from the Jam Boys props...

Sunday The first game was a blur, not from the alcohol the night before but because it went so quickly. This was against the Banger Colts.......Their boys not so quietly confident and we really wanted to win well. We did.

The second and last game for the Southerners Gold was the most enjoyable game for me. We got to play against some players that we looked up (Bobby Skinstad, Robby Fleck) and even one that we usually play with. But the Jam Boys were too strong and beat us 20-0. But the game was played in great spirits and we all walked off happy. The Jamboys eventually went on to win the whole competition although I think they will be asking Jay to play for them next year as he carved up on a few runs.

Southerners Black

We had a strong team on paper but unfortunately not all the guys on paper showed up for the tournament. But looking around we still had a team of good players, we just didn't have enough of them. This was made worse by the fact that a lot of the boys also played for the Gold team and were pretty tired.

We welcomed some rookies and near-rookies into the team this tournament. Kris, Ryan, Sparky, and Jason all played in their first 10's tournaments for the Southerners and all played really well. Sparky was easy to spot because he was hobbling round the paddock with a pulled hammy for 3 games, still keen as mustard and still smashing anyone who came near him.

The spirited Ultan Peters led the side, back from Singapore on holiday and big Jean was named vice Captain because he came all the way from Dubai. Both got back into the swing of Southerners Rugby both on and off the pitch fairly quickly (both were MIA at various times over the weekend; Ultan unfortunately missing the warm-up and coin-toss of match 1 Sunday).

We played well all weekend against tough sides. We won our last game on Saturday and little else but still kept our heads up. Sunday was a tough day too but again we never gave up.

Congratulations to everyone who wore the Black jersey over the weekend. It was a great tournament.

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