The Taste of 2007…

After an 8 week banishment from Super rugby to take part in reconditioning and skills programs certain All Blacks returned to the fray with a competitive fire burning inside their newly constructed cores. Ricky Macaw made his first turnover in 2min 37s and made 12 tackles in the first half alone. When you keep a man away from something he loves, he comes back firing…

Speculation abounds whether the same rigorous training schedules were adhered to by the men of the Internal League rugby fraternity and although they might not look as attractive in a tight fitting adidas driFit jersey, I think there is little doubt that when they run out next week they’ll will be firing on all cylinders!

The off-season for many is a time of introspection and down time punctuated by hard kilometres on the road and hard sessions in the gym. The other 99% spend it hovering around the bars of Tiger or pressing the up-down button of ski lifts in Aspen. Regardless of which group you fall into, your mental mouth salivates at the thought of hitting that first ruck, making that first in contact offload or singing that first down-down song. The 18th of April is around the corner, and it’s time to let the games begin…

No matter how things change down on the Green Mile, everything seems to stay the same. Tries happen and are forgotten, fines meetings are had and cleaned up, players make their mark and graduate (unless they’re a nadoe), teams come and go, first you girls come and come again…but at the end of it all it just a team of friends playing the game of gods against another team.

The format of this years competition has been reconstructed to hopefully allow a structure that is more conducive to ensure the longevity of the brand of rugby that is associated with varsity rugby. A free flowing spectacle of fast paced running rugby where sides take on each other with skill and finesse thrown in amongst the standard SA approach of maul and kick. If you aren’t familiar with the new format scroll down to the post below and educate yourself on it.

The next 8 rugby weeks are dedicated to two sessions of Pool Stages (Round 1 and Round 2) where sides will compete against the sides in their pool to establish the draw for the knock out stages.

The pools are:

There are a few knew names in there including the readmission of Clarendon from Carinus Village, a side from the new day res, Ikhaya and the much talked about Eastern Cape 2 Rios. Clarendon’s absence from 2006 was missed heavily although probably by virtue of their travelling supporters club of golf5 sporting blonde haired beauties and not their substantial contribution to the rugby. Ikaya are an unknown quantity although we are predicting a similar impact to the Western Force in their first year of Super rugby. As their sponsorship suggests the EC2R’s have off field targets that may eclipse their on field antics but having signed many of the out casts from the Eastern Cape Spears they should have an impressive go of it.

The regularity that Wednesday night rugby will have on our calendars is stemmed somewhat by varies factors such as lank long varsity holidays, Intervarsity and other UCT RFC home games but spectators can diarised 9 such Wednesday’s and hence cancel 9 Thursday morning first periods. Since you can’t catch it on ESPN or at Tiger with $1 draft and free buffalo wings you will have to come catch all the action live. And if only half of you respond we will still probably get more bums on seats than if you hosted the ICC in the Windies.

See you soon, on the Mile….