Portland 24 v Central Maine 20

The hometown heroes traveled to Farmington for their first exhibition match of the fall season against the Central Maine Stripers. While we were treating this match as an opportunity to try newer players and people in new positions, we expected to walk away with an easy victory. It was anything but easy. It was hot as hell, the field while nice and plush on one end, was quite possibly worse than Fox Street on the other end. To make matters worse, the Stripers didn’t just lay down and concede victory as we had expected. In fact, they scored the first points of the match mere minutes into play. If not for the dead nuts kicking of hooker Andy Nelson the Stripers would have won the match. While we were able to keep the phase rugby going strong for six or seven phases, we lacked the intensity and urgency needed to put the ball down in their try zone. Our lineouts were working up until we brought the ball down to the ground, then we had trouble getting quick ball out to the backs. Speaking of the backs, they seemed a bit confused between the newer style of play we’ve been working on at practice and the attack scenarios of last season. The brightest moment of the day for Portland was the series of phases that ended with Dave “don’t call me Jacko” Jackowitz smashing through the Striper defense and into the try zone.

In order to get this club ready for the fall season we need everyone to get out to practice and learn our new offensive attacks and defensive strategy. Simply coming to practice is not enough; we also need to be running on our days off. While it was brutally hot for rugby on Saturday, our fitness was also somewhat lacking. So ruggers, drop the remote, put down that ice cream, get off your ass, and GET IN SHAPE!