A gentle reminder about the Reggae Booze Cruise coming up at the end of the month. July 24th to be precise, from 4pm to 7pm. Three hours stuck out at sea with all your team mates - but apart from that it promises to be a good time. The event is being coordinated with the Navigators Quad Rugby team, so it promises to be a whole lot better organized than anything we could've done by ourselves. The band "Stream" will be playing, if that means anything to you, and more importantly there will be a cash bar. Tropical attire is encouraged, and there will be door prizes awarded, although I'm not sure what for. Good behavior, probably.

Jimmy Hendricks informed me that all active players are required to sell 5 tickets each, and that they must be to hot girls only. OK, I made that last bit up, but if you could at least make an effort to target the deeper end of the female gene pool I think we'd all have a much better time.

Hats off to the Eagles this weekend for giving the French a scare. Only a late surge from the Les Blues allowed them to avoid utter humiliation. Read the full report here.

Lastly, I need to leave you with a link that will render you entirely non-productive for the rest of the day. Here you go. Talk about a train wreck of humanity. I have so much to get off my chest....

Aprapos of nothing, as usual, I found this link covering the ongoing chlorination of the gene pool. I looked, but there are no Portland rugby players to be found....yet.

Have a great weekend. Allez les Eagles!

Here's some information on selections and whatnot for this weekend's test versus France. If we can keep it within 50 points, we'll be doing well. The only guys from the Northeast are the Wolfhounds scrummie and Mark Griffin of Old Blue who has drifted in and out of favor for the last couple of years.

Goff On Rugby -- American Rugby News

Belated congratulations to Matt Boyer and his fair wife on the arrival of their son, Henry William Boyer. He was born on May 24, sharing a birthday with Bob Dylan, Queen Victoria, Tracy McGrady and Heavy D. According to Matt he's a big fella so the next generation of Portland rugby players is well under way.

Also congrats to Matt Burgess for completing his run up Mt. Washington, and for shaving 30 minutes of his previous best time (of 4 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes). Just kidding! There's a picture circulating of Matt approaching the summit, and that expression on his face is pure joy!

Thats all the news for now. Stay frosty.

Hola Amigos. This posting lark was getting the better of me and I've been seriously out of new material for a long time. Besides, the Spring season (and I use the term loosely) is over, so there isn't a whole hell of a lot going on.

Unless of course you count Euro 2004, where just yesterday England inflicted a crushing defeat on Croatia and Wayne Rooney scored two fantastic goals. I swear, that boy is the next Gary Linekar (who hell he?). So next stop Portugal in the quarter-finals. If we win, the only certainty will be that many innocent English fans will get knifed by those crazy Latin bastards. They love their football down there, but only in a gay, man-kissing, crime-of-passion kind of way. Of course, the Portugese people I've met over here are a much more level-headed bunch....

Meanwhile the England rugby team continues its free fall, getting kicked up one side of New Zealand and down the other, and getting all chippy about it too. I think we should've refused to play again after we won the world cup. Not that they're alone mind you, Scotland got their asses handed to them by Australia and South Africa used up Ireland. Wales on the other hand beat Argentina, which really isn't much to write home about.

I'll tell you what though, the cricket team looks pretty good. The boys beat New Zealand 3-0 in the test series and look to do the same to the much diminished West Indies. When will they make cricket and Olympic sport again?

Alright, that's all the sports news that's fit to print. On to a fine new links. Apparently this craigslist.org thing is a phenomenon that has passed me by, until today. As with most of the internet it is a pile of boring, self-indulgent shit interspersed with a few gems. Fortunately they've done much of the sifting for you in their "best of" section. My own favorites inclulde this little warm-up test; a note from my ex-girlfriend; a shout-out to the neighbors; some love from the girl at the front desk; my own confession; and a note to the wife.

Go on and explore the whole lot for yourself here.

For all the talk, it was just a small group of stalwarts who made their way up to Attitash this weekend to round off the Spring season. Many names had been thrown out during the week about who was going to attend, but in the end it was just the usual suspects.

Alright, enough about the wasters, once again Portland found themselves drawn against Mystic River in the opening game. On paper this pits the top two sides against each other, and it was the Boston side that had the upper hand. Portland showed up initially with only 14 players, many of whom were carrying injuries from earlier in the Spring. After borrowing a player from Old Gold we took the field against a young and motivated Mystic side.

The Portland side hung with Mystics throughout the first half, and the 3-7 scoreline at the break was a fair reflection of the run of play. The second half was not so close however, as cracks were exposed and Mystics were able to run in 3 or 4 tries. In the process Portland picked up a couple of new injuries, lost their sub back to Old Gold, and lost another player to family commitments for the afternoon.

Things did not look good for our second scheduled game against Team Frankenstein, but fortunately they were even flakier than us, and showed up with only a handful of players. That means a forfeit, and a welcome let off for us. Naturally all we wanted to do was celebrate our good fortune, and then celebrate some more.

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent celebrating, as was the evening, and long in to the night. By this time we knew we were drawn against our old favorites, Old Gold, for the third place playoff, so nobody was going to loose any sleep over that.

The morning dawned clear and bright, and after some burned eggs for breakfast, the reinforcements that met us at the ground that morning were a welcome sight. Fred, John and Jerry McQ had made it back from the day before, and Diesel and Tim McMahon added some welcome strength to our pack.

With all of this extra talent on board Old Gold never really stood much of a chance (do they ever?), and they were rolled pretty convincingly. Not sure how many we scored, but I know they didn't score any, and third place was comfortably ours.

That about wraps it up. Mystics beat up on Charles River for the final the day before, and it looks like North Shore won something for probably yelling the most.

Check out this sight for pictures of our game against Mystics and possible the one against Old Gold soon.