Gentlemen,

Well a very enjoyable trip down to Atlanta on Saturday. It was a most spacious bus with plenty of seats to choose from. As always with Atlanta it was hotter than hell down there. They know no cold season. The field was littered nicely with various fireant hills that beckoned a tackled body to lay on. We had one lone supporter travel with us. As soon as he cracked his first tall boy at 9am I knew it would be trouble. Mr. Ritz nearly became the first touch judge to be sent off and even before the game started. Mr. Ritz you do not need to debate with the referee on the term that dwarfs prefer to be called. The first half was definitely one way traffic. We just weren't able to get any continuity going. And we defended long periods but inevitably they were going to cross. The 2nd half was much better. We actually started to create good ball for stick to distribute to the backline. The forwards were getting to the breakdown and actually blowing the opposition off the ball. Once the backs had some clean ball and a bit of room to move we actually started to penetrate and string some good phases together. We were unlucky not to score a number of times. We were finally rewarded with a penalty close to the line and Will Dieter managed to cross over in front of the posts(It was a middle school football field with the tryline in front of the goalposts)

To celebrate the end of the game Mr. Ritz and Mr. Myers picked team for a relay shotgun boat race. Team Ritz won this race but was disqualified due to Mr. Lindsay's heinous spillage from his can. When you open the can the hole should point towards the sky not towards the ground.

So it was on to the after party at Fado's I must admit the spread was excellent unfortunately it didn't take long to go through the first free 88 pints. After that people were getting antsy as there was free beer on the bus so we departed. However it seems that our esteemed Social Chair had not accurately predicted the quantity of beer needed for a bustrip. He is a liteweight anyway. So we had to make a brief pitstop at the Gas-up Beer and gasoline joint. The returning players were greeted with raucous applause as the booty was dispensed among the parched players. A court session ensued when many heinous crimes were brought to the attention of the court where the only fit punishment was a guzzle from the jagermeister bottle. Of course as is customary the noise and banter level did rise significantly at the conclusion of the bottle of jagermeister, the 5 bottles of strawberry hill and Mr. Ritzes bottle of Jack. We all arrived back in one piece at Dougals not long after the stroke of 9. So all in all it was a good day.

So quickly to this weeks schedule. We have no game this weekend. There is a GRU vs Charlotte game out at Furman at 1:00pm on Saturday. I encourage all who would like a run with the GRU team to let me know so I can forward your name to the coach. We will be running touch tomorrow night. However it is important that we get the numbers out there on Thursday night so we can have a regular practice. We have 4 weeks of games after this weekend. So we still have some major games we need to prepare for. Remember as well that we are trying to implement various skills and game plan elements into our team that we need to cover at practice so we can use them during the game. We still have to play Asheville, Charleston and Columbia as well as the Palmetto Tournament. These are good hard games that we need to focus on so we can fine tune our GamePlan for the Spring season. So let's get out at practice so we can run as a team and work towards winning some good games.

Dan Roberts
Coach Greenville RFC


Greenville Grffins Rugby Club