|
|
♔ Sunday, October 24, 2010
8:24 PM |
»
And oh my love~~
As the last official tournament in 2010 for NUS, the RP Tertiary 7s tournament on the 23rd of October was looked upon with much anticipation, sadness (or glee!), but ultimately with much nostalgia, especially for the year 4s, and especially for the soon-to-be graduating seniors in semester 1.
Featuring teams from NTU, RP and a barbarians SMU team, NUS emerged champions after living three lives and taking one big bite of the cherry. (sidenote: please forgive any inaccuracies or glossing over main points like score and try scorers because the NUS oldest player has a bad memory and it doesn't help that recalling the matches has a
hazy, dream-like quality to it)
Now, it cannot be denied that NUS always seem to start slow, and our first game against SMU had our coach, Wing, on the edge for some 10 mins. The first few minutes saw SMU pushing towards our try line , while we defended phase after phase. Alas, we did not manage to turnover the ball and SMU got in an early try. After SUNIG's experience however, we were used to coming back from behind, and I dare say we had a quiet confidence that we would eventually pull through. Four minutes left on the clock and plenty of excellent defending later, we managed to get a break from the tournament's MVP Esther Tan who waltzed through 3 defenders to try under the post. A missed conversion and we were tied with SMU with minutes to spare. The minutes flew by and I only remember NUS rookie of the year Caslin getting the ball, a defender flailing her arms fruitlessly, Caslin's power calves getting further, legs, a boot, (I must have been on the ground) and the whistle for a TRY. This time, the conversion was good ;) and we won 12-5.
The most intense game yet was about to kick off, in the mid-day heat and haze against our friendly NTU, due to a certain scrum/ruck specialist on NTU's side who certainly wow-ed the crowd, and a certain fairy who could fly (which we must chase). It was in the stars that NTU had to score first and we had to play catch-up. However, the stars were busy re-aligning on NUS's side, and it was urgency off a series of penalties to us that we put in a try of our own. The blinding rucks and misty haze has a memory erasing quality that resulted much of the writer's inability to fill in the next sequence of events, except the heavy haze-filled breaths, the i-am-tired-but-must-look-not-tired look on everyone's faces, and finally the jubilant-but-secretly-relieved-its-over look. This is the game we fell and got up, we erred and made up, we defended our ass off, we played our hearts out, picked it back up and played some more. We got our deserving win, and we grew as a team (hungrier too for the gold, the food, and a certain peanut butter bread/cake.)
To be crowned Champions, we had one last game to prove it, and prove it we did. We were the stars of our movie (sometimes watching our co-actors but our coach doesn't have to know that) and we put up a good show for the audience with four tries. Capitalising on RP's lack of communication among their players, we made a few good breaks to put the ball under the posts. We were defensively sound for most of the game with everyone working hard at the breakdowns but a last minute lapse in concentration allowed an RP player to break through our defense line to try just as the horn sounded. This brought out a little frown on our coach's face but not for long because nobody frowns at Champions.
Looking back from when we started our season with fitness sessions at the track, trainings at the s**tty field, experience and fun at Bangkok, to our games at SUNIG, SRSS and finally IVP, it has been a momentous journey that I am glad to have shared with every one of you.(insert soulful music) Its time to say bye (sob now!) and I am glad to see how everyone has grown together as a team and I am sure we can continue breaking many firsts for university women's rugby.So yes we ended our (official) rugby semester with a bang and hopefully our academic semester too. No doubt though we will be back for more unofficial rugby games and gatherings!
Labels: IVP
