The beginnings

Here are the GoodGym Newcastle rugby department at their first training session, led by coach Dan.

It was a sunny summers day in the park where Dan imparted his extensive rugby knowledge. There were drills to help everybody get more confident with the ball and for everybody to learn the basics. It was a really fun session and we left with real enthusiasm for the tournament, raring to get going.

Week 1

Here we are. The big day. The real deal.

The sun may have deserted us since the training session but the enthusiasm hadn’t. It was really exciting to be there with all the other teams warming up. It felt like we were part of something and I felt proud to be representing GoodGym with all the excellent doers of good deeds on our team. What was immediately apparent was how good a few of the other teams were. We had time to watch a few of the opening games, practice throwing the ball around to warm up and then we were on. Game 1.

GoodGym Newcastle 0 - 7 The Ringers

Wow, we do not know the rules.

Everything we did in this game led to the referee signalling for the ball to be turned over to the opposition. You could barely call this a game of touch rugby, it was just a game of tag for us. We learnt a lot as the game went on. At the beginning we were panicking whenever we were close to being touched, so the ball was quickly thrown in any direction - usually directly to the ground. This led to the ball being turned over. Then any time we got touched we didn’t know the correct procedure to get the ball back in play. This led to the ball being turned over. After we tackled, we didn’t know we had to retreat 5 yards before we could tackle again, so most of our tackles didn’t count. I don’t even remember having the ball.

By the end of the game we knew about 60% of the rules. This might just be me, but knowing the rules made me excited for the second game. At least we knew what we would be doing. There was time between this game and the second game to practice what we had learnt and enough time for Evan to injure himself but luckily he managed to run it off.

GoodGym Newcastle 0 - 3 Green Eagle

This went much better. The game was at 0 - 1 and in reach for GoodGym for most of the time. We still had a few issues with the rules but we managed to get the ball and run a few times. Even making it into their half a few times. Then it happened. We scored. We actually managed to get the ball all the way to the try line and score. But since we hadn’t actually ever got that far before we didn’t know any of the rules about scoring. So it was disallowed. Turns out you can’t score a try from a roll ball without passing first. How could we have known that?

The main issue we had in this game was the weather. The rain started coming down and the pitch was slippy. This game was on real grass, while the rest were on a synthetic pitch. It was much slippier out here. I fell. Michael fell. We all fell. (Nick didn’t fall because he actually had the correct footware.) This meant that we really couldn’t change directions because any tight turn meant a certain trip to the grass, making our only plan to run in a straight line forwards and hope (and pass to Nick).

A definite improvement on the first game but it was definitely an easier opponent.

GoodGym Newcastle 0 - 6 Storm

These guys were good. We did well for a long time in this game. Defending valiantly but also launching a few attacks. Most of the trys came late in the game as fatigue set in. We were a comparatively small team with only one sub available to us meaning there was little time to rest. Add that to the superhuman half and full marathon efforts a lot of our team were still recovering from and you can see why we started to fade.

Storm were really nice. They gave us lots of advice after the game and even took the group photo of us.

I think we all learnt a lot. There was a lot of tactical talk as we departed the field for the last time. We now know how to play and are hungry for our first try. It was great to see all the smiling faces though - we might not have had anything to celebrate but we had a lot of fun.

I’m already counting down the hours until we can get back on the pitch. Who’s up for some training?

Here’s some of our best shots from the night. Thank you for all the photographers battling the rain!

Week 1 - Week 2