Looking for the Providence game?

...well look no further than the maps below for the locations of both the on-field and post match festivities.

It's leauge season for reals now, so come see if all the hard work will pay off. Game on!

Here's where the game will be played, otherwise known as Dougherty Field:

View Larger Map

Top food, top beer and above all topless waitresses.

View Larger Map

Training moves (again)

In case you haven't clocked it yet, training has moved again, this time back to Payson Park. We should remain here until the clocks go back, at which time we'll move back to Riverton and take advantage of their floodlights and wonderful drainage.

If you can't find Payson Park by now, shame on you, but if you've just moved here or like to color-in, here's another map.

Get thee to the Seacoast game

Saturday brings our first home fixture of the Fall season with a warm up game against our neighbors from down the road, Seacoast.
This would be a make-up match for the game-that-never-was in the Spring, when they were too "nicked up" from winning the D3 cup at NERFU. I then said some things about them, they said some more things, and much hilarity ensued.

But that's all behind us now, and we're all set for some spirited competition tomorrow. The A Side kicks off at 1pm, so players should be in the neighborhood by 11:30am.

Here's where the game will be played, otherwise known as Dougherty Field:

View Larger Map

After all that's said and done, we will be heading off to our new sponsors, The Stadium, for some booze, food and first-class waitresses. Meet us there if you're just too darn frit of getting roped in to play....

View Larger Map

Weymouth Warm Up

Portland made its first attempt to gather the faithful this weekend for a warm up game at South Shore, and yea verily, Coleridge was right, summer has indeed set in with its usual severity.

Nothing more to say about the numbers that hasn't already been said behind closed doors. It was what it was. Thirteen and later fourteen players were able to inconvenience themselves long enough to take the trip down to South Weymouth, while others attended to the sundry other distractions that can get in our way if we want them to.

Thanks to South Shore for treating the game in the spirit in which it was intended and for lending us a couple of players to fill in the gaps in our own ranks, and it was thusly equipped that we commenced the game of three 25-minute periods.

The South Shore pitch is a small one, with just enough room to land a couple of hundred geese apparently, and with a stiff cross-field breeze the touchlines too often came in to play and prevented much in the way of fluid play. Both sides were clearly reacquainting themselves with the rules, giving rise to numerous penalties and a staccato style of play that could not have been too easy on the eye of the spectators.

Lots of lineouts ensued, which themselves were often ugly slap-around affairs, not helped by different calls and some cross-cultural confusion in pronunciation. It'll all be alright on the night though.

Although South Shore opened the scoring with a penalty, Portland were first to cross the line when Jerry Alves created and then jinked through the kind of gap that only he could fit through. Evan made the conversion and thanks to some good Portland defense and circuitous running by South Shore backs, that's how the score remained for most of the rest of the period. At the very end however an optimistic kick ahead from South Shore bounced kindly for them, wrong footed our full back, and gifted them a score. 10-7 at "third time".

The second third was also pretty evenly matched, with Portland adding a try through a Francis crash ball, and a penalty of our own, while South Shore managed another converted score to level the game at 17-17.

Portland was able to put some daylight between themselves and the hosts in the third period, with 3 tries to South Shore's 1. A pair of conversions a-piece brought the final score to 34-24 in favor of the visitors.

A good showing by those who were there, but it's the not-showing that gave greater cause for concern.

Portland are at home to Seacoast this coming weekend, so expect the woodwork to be fully vacated.

Training moves to Riverton, Tuesday added

As a herald of the impending league season our training routine gets a little more formal next week with the addition of a Tuesday session and a move to the (slightly) less lumpy venue of Riverton School.

Noobs can find some directions to the Riverton venue here. Just go down to the end of the school parking lot and we should be hard to miss. Tuesday and Thursday sessions kick-off at 6pm as usual, so show up early enough to kit up and be ready to go by then.

Sign up to the message board to get any weather related changes to this plan that may occur as the season unfolds.

Acton (damp)Fireworks

Sorry for the delay in getting this to you, but given that the news is less than scintillating it just hasn't seemed that important. No disrespect to those who participated, but clearly summer isn't a big rugby time for a lot of you, so what's the rush, eh?

Anyway, this was my first time at the annual "New England 10's Championship" put on by Old Gold in Acton, although I'd heard plenty about what a good time it is and Portland's storied past at the event. I'd also heard about what a hard time it could be to get players together in the middle of summer, and this year proved to be no exception. On the face of it you wouldn't think getting 10 plus a few subs together would be all that hard when we can get 45+ out for the chance of a few cheap tries at the fairgrounds, but it wasn't until the morning of that we were able to confirm that we actually had enough players to participate. Indeed, it was only thanks to a couple of St. A's finest, Sean and Ray, that we were able to pass muster.

Portland had been drawn into the erm..."group of death", containing Springfield, Middlesex and the unknown quantity of Brookline High School Alumni, although given the size of the group we would only have to play The Rifles and Brookline.

We arrived just in time for kick off against Springfield, who had returned all of their Irish ringers back to Old Gold, and were now devoid of super powers. The result was a pretty free flowing game that saw Portland put up 43 points while leaking 12. That worked out to about a try every two minutes, and a tackle every five. All that touch-sevens in Payson had clearly put Portland in to an offensive mindset, although would that be at the expense of any defense when the time came?

If Brookline HS ever offered rugby on the curriculum, it was clearly a long time ago, and criteria for the alumni side had become pretty loose. And so it was another sling-around, with Brookline deprived of much possession to do anything with. The result was 35-5 in Portland's favor, without too much to write home about.

2-and-0 in group play gave Portland a pass in to the Championship bracket with all the big guns, although it would be a bit of a wait before our opposition would reveal themselves. In the end it turned out to be Northeastern, who had proven themselves to be Portland's nemesis in the two previous years. On the face of it however it appeared to be a good draw, steering clear of all the D1 clubs for another round.

As it turned out however any hopes of a free pass proved ill-founded, as Portland pretty much rolled over and played dead and allowed the kids from Northeastern to run in 35 uncontested points. Whether it was the lack of opposition in the group games, playing too much touch, or just general apathy, Portland failed to contest for the ball at the breakdown, which sucked in too many players and left too much space for the college speedsters. Towards the end of the match Portland were at least able to mount some opposition, but by then it was of course too late.

So, despite the promising start, Portland went out with a disappointing whimper. Meanwhile Northeastern went out in the next round to the eventual winners, Mystics.

Thanks to all of those who went down and gave it a shot. Congrats to Portland Women's team who won the Bowl Division (Sarah’s hot wet t-shirt picture here) and also to the Stripers who won the Men's Bowl (Chris' not so hot picture here).