Wild OATS Rugby

Oswego Alumni Touring Side

Pre-season Scrimmage against Courtland:

The Wizards kicked off their new season in Division II—after being promoted from D 3 - with a scrimmage against Cortland (D 1) on Labor Day weekend.  We played them even for the first 20 minute period & out-scored them in the 2nd period, despite making a couple of substitutions.  3rd period, we emptied the bench to get a lot of rookies a taste of the game, during which Cortland put up a few scores—having left in their entire 1st side!  At the beginning of the 4th 20-minute period, I threw back in some of the starters, to staunch the bleeding and regain some stability, which allowed us to reassert our control!  It was a good outing overall, despite a few teeth knocked out of a Cortland scrummer’s mouth, as he attempted to tackle one of our new players with his face!  They were keen to attend our “social hour” and it seemed like the Old Days—partying with Cortland!!

Match #1 - Colgate: (W) 36-5

Our 1st official league game came the following week, at home, on a warm sunny Saturday, against Colgate:  They showed up, looking all clean and earnest about the game at hand—they even had tackling pads for their warm-ups!  (Something we should have tried to “borrow”!)  Their coach was a quiet guy, who played back in the 80s and looked very “J Crew”, with his pink tie!  (Someone on the team later told me of a comment to the effect, “Their coach is all dressed up with a tie and our coach doesn’t even have shoes!”  I believe he was referring to one of my assistant coaches who actually played with us a few years ago, when we instituted the Harborfest 10s tournament!!)  At any rate, the action started out fairly furiously, with the scrums banging each other back and forth in the rucks.  But, after their backs got the ball out a couple of times and were run over by our defensive swarm, they stopped trying to catch the ball, after which our back line smashed through them time and again.  We scored 17 points in the 1st half and 19 in the 2nd, with a couple executed with the scrum’s “TNT” rolling-rucking strategy, which left their scrum confused and littered about the field!  Had it not been for a hasty injury substitution, we could have prevented the 1 try they managed, late in the 2nd half, running against an inexperienced winger.  Ah  Well!  They did give us a 2nd match, which allowed all our rookies to gain some more experience, however it was against mostly the same first side players, as their coach seemed disappointed by their play and forced most of them to continue play in the 2nd game as punishment, or some attempt to regain their pride!  They only had about 10 subs anyhow, as the attrition from the 1st game seemed to dwindle their ranks.  Well they were able to run the score up on our “Bs”, but not without getting banged up in the process, ‘cause our rookies are eager and fast, if not completely experienced yet.  We had a few head-knocks and such, so substitutions came frequently, further disrupting the continuity.  We scored a few times to their many, but a lot was learned in the process.  Needless to say, their polite declination to socialize afterwards was a thin disguise to their overall embarrassment of the day’s events!

Match #2 - Siena College: (L) 10-7

We arrived down in Albany, to confront a fairly large, over-fed team on perhaps the smallest field I’ve ever seen!  It couldn’t have been more than 80 yards long, as the 22 meter line was about on top of the 10 meter line and the width of the field probably measured 45-50 yards!  I had a feeling it was going to be a Scrum Game and it was!  They were big loads to encounter and initially our scrum had its hands full—with some hard-hitting loose rucks.  They seemed reluctant to give the ball to their backs and when they finally did, our normal hard-hitting defense set the stage for the “smash-mouth” contest that continued through the afternoon.  Sienna managed to push over a try in the middle of the 1st half, with a good maul that they had some momentum behind.  It taught our scrum that it was going to be a dog fight all afternoon, so they proceeded to bang away at them, putting them down time after time, even causing a time out for a water break? (I don’t know what that was about, but apparently some “lawyer-to-be” on their side made the case that the player laying on the ground exhausted in the try zone was somehow injured, so the rest of them could get water!!!)  Shortly after, our scrum pushed one over in a ruck, only to get the 1st of 4 maul-produced tries called “held-up”!!  This ref was pitiful!  He was never in a position to follow the ball, especially moving around a ruck to actually witness when and by whom the ball was touched down, or held up—he was usually late, panting down the field in time to untangle a pile of scrummers fighting for a ball down underneath.  (I didn’t have positive feelings when he approached me before the game, frantically chewing on a banana to replenish his energy from reffing an earlier game, when he asked me if there were any rule changes he should know about, as he hadn’t attended the ref training meeting where they went over such things!)  At any rate, things geared up for the 2nd half, as we continued to run through and over their backline every time we could get the ball out of the rucks, however, being only 2 passes away from the sideline at all times, we ran out of room constantly, scoring only after many heroic break-throughs by combined interplay by scrum and backs.  With the score tied towards the last 10 minutes, they received a penalty down in our end, which put them in the lead by 3.  (Another constant with the deplorable officiating was that while calling offsides penalties against us frequently—(even a couple for breaking through the line-out ater the ball had been tipped to the scrum-half, as he was standing there deciding who to throw it to!)—he only once caught them off-sides, as he always had his back to their backline, while they camped out almost on our scrum’s side of the ball!  Regardless, we kept pushing, despite his sight-failure, and were threatening yet again, driving deep to their end, with mauls and rucks taking us again over the line to touch down amidst the swarming scrum, only to have the ref arrive late again and call “held up”, ‘cause he couldn’t see where the ball was.  From the 5 yard scrum, we managed to strike close once more, before going into touch.  From the line out, they pushed us to about the 22, where  maul ensued, and with the ref on the wrong side again, and a version of “WWF” broke out with their scrummers lifting and body-slamming one of our lighter backs in the process.  That was the 2nd time that happened during the contest, and I (along with many parents) had had  it!  Hurling a brand new roll of adhesive tape in the ref’s direction, I attempted to point out the actions he was missing, just as the players on the field were taking matters into their own hands, whereupon I had to become the 16th player on the field and run out to the growing melee.   The sidelines emptied and we managed to extract our abused player with a few unkind words to the ref to do his f$#ing job!  He called a scrum, saying it was the last play of the game, and after the ball came straight out, requiring a follow-up put-in, he declared that was it—with no apparent “last play of the game” completed!  Game over!  He grabbed his touch judge flags and bolted for the exits, as we cheered the other team for the best “Home Job” we’ve ever had!  (Such nice Catholic Boys and all!)  We’ll see them in the play0offs for sure and hopefully on a real field.

Match #3 - Hamilton College: (L) 13-6

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Match #4 - Union College: (W) 67-8

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Match #5 - SUNY Plattsburgh: (W) 7-5

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Match #6 - Rensselaer Polytecnic Institute: (T) 5-5

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