Festival of Northern Rugby

After a brief hiatus Portland is back in action tomorrow with their first home fixture in quite some time. But what a fixture it is, with two teams showing up to have a tilt at your home-town heroes.

Firstly we have the newly formed Monadnock RFC, aka Keene State Alumni, who have burst on to the D3 scene this year and who are looking to build on some of their strong performances against Bull Moose and erm...nobody else. I'm sure you're all very interested in that strange name they've chosen for themselves, which presumably they've taken from Mount Monadnock which is wicked close by to Keene, NH. What's even more interesting than that is the fact that the term "monadnock" has been adopted by American geologists as an alternate term for "inselberg" which describes "an isolated hill, knob, ridge or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gentle sloping or virtually level surrounding plain".

So lets hope they're able to rise abruptly to the occasion and put on a good show without looking like isolated knobs.

Oh snap!

As if that doesn't all sound like too much fun, the second act brings us even more rugby from the wild frontier, when the Central Maine Stripers (and perhaps even a few Bull Moosers) will be strutting their stuff. The Stripers themselves are, of course, named after the Three-Striped Night Monkey (Aotus Trivirgatus), one of several species of Northern Owl Monkey. Known for their large eyes and striking face markings they feed mainly of fruit, nuts, leaves insects and small invertebrates.

No, that's what the monkeys eat, silly.

After that, there's even talk of a third act, in which the Knobs and the Monkeys duke it out for your viewing pleasure. All that and sunny too!

So all you Old Boys should bring your boots and your lawn chair, so after you've phoned-in your requisite 40 minutes of rugby you can put your feet up and tell us how it was done in your day. I can't wait!

Oh yeah, it all kicks-off at the Fairgrounds at 1pm.