‘Round of 16′ Match: YCAC 33  Meiji University 5 (HT 19-0)
Tries: Alan Bunting (3), Will Whetstone, Hayden Steed
Conversions: Waisale Serevi, Hayden Steed, Alan Bunting (2)
Traditionally the opening match of the YCAC 7′s is a difficult one for the host club as it inevitably takes some time for our ‘guest players’ to gel with our regulars. This year however YCAC suffered no such problems and managed a solid win over Meiji. Leading the way for YCAC with an impressive hat-trick of tries was Alan “Snowball” Bunting (who played several regular season games for YCAC this season). It was also very pleasing to see Will “Crowbar” Whetstone (2008/09 1st XV MVP) prove his ability to play at a higher level by capping off a good performance at hooker with a well-deserved try. Other YCAC regulars Maui “Apocalypto” Magele and Ryan “Shotgun” Rogers also got some game-time off the bench in this match.
 
Cup Quarter-Final: YCAC 21  Kanto Gakuin University 7 (HT 14-0)
Tries: Kane Hancy, Alan Bunting, Jonetani Ratu
Conversions: Waisale Serevi (2), Jonetani Ratu
There were some nerves amongst the YCAC supporters before this match as Kanto Gakuin had won this tournament in 2007 and absolutely hammered corporate team Kurita (46-0) a couple of hours earlier. However, Kane “Weasel” Hancy didn’t know any of this. All he knew was that, for once, he was looking across the field at opponents the same size as him and he was damn well going to take advantage! And take advantage he did, dominating the game with the same skills that saw him score 12 tries in six matches for YCAC earlier this season. Led by the fearless Hancy (and with Bunts again prominent), the YCAC team showed their quality in this match and established themselves as the team to beat in the 2009 tournament. Indeed, it speaks volumes of the quality of the 2009 YCAC team a player like Nathan “Flash” Ashley (Australia 7′s, Oxford University, Japan 7′s Captain, IBM) was able to be brought off the bench in each match. The veteran of the YCAC 7′s side and another who has played several regular season games for YCAC in past seasons, Ashley thinks that 2009 may have been his last 7′s appearance for YCAC but has vowed to be back for the Panty Shield next year!
 
Cup Semi-Final: YCAC 17  Kubota Spears 7 (HT 5-0)
Tries: Jonetani Ratu (2), Kane Hancy
Conversions: Jonetani Ratu
Kubota Spears are a fully professional side who compete in Japan’s Top League so it was clear that this was going to be a tough match. However, with a YCAC starting line-up which included four former New Zealand 7′s representatives and two former Fiji representatives (including the most famous 7′s player of all time) the home club had every reason to enter this match with confidence. As it panned out, Kubota provided more of a physical challenge than previous opponents Meiji and Kanto Gakuin but the individual brilliance of Jonetani “By Chance” Ratu was enough to see YCAC into a second consecutive Cup final. It was actually an amazing piece of luck that led to Ratu playing in this tournament at all. After starring for YCAC in last year’s event both Simon “El Presidente” Ryan and Waisale “The Little General” Serevi were keen to secure the services of the Hino Motors professional again but with no contact details for him it looked like this was not to be. However, by pure chance the team ran into Ratu on Friday on the street in Yoyogi and found out that he was available to play! 
 
Cup Final: YCAC 21  Coca-Cola West Red Sparks 12 (HT 7-12)
Tries: Jonetani Ratu, Hayden Steed (2)
Conversions: Waisale Serevi (3)
In the semi-final of last year’s event Top League side Coca Cola West Red Sparks provided YCAC with their toughest match of the tournament, pushing the home side all the way in the semi-final before eventually losing 10-5. As such, YCAC knew they would be in for a tough final against a Coca-Cola side which contained four foreigners in their ranks (including Japan fly-half Shaun “Sherminator” Webb, the classmate of YCAC regular Willie “Mini Me” Lapthorn). Coca-Cola started the stronger of the two teams and went into the lead with a two tries to one lead (the first time YCAC had been behind in the tournament). However, the second half saw a massive effort from the YCAC forwards, led by Jimmy “Night” Maher. The NightMaher has been a regular presence at YCAC this season and those who know him will not be surprised that despite having played every minute of every previous game he still managed to keep going at 100% for the full 20 minutes of the final. Through the efforts of the forwards the backs got a little bit of ball to play with and in this situation The Little General stepped up and showed everyone in attendance why, even at the age of 40, he is still the face of 7′s worldwide by combining with 20 year-old Hayden “The White Islander” Steed to score a 95-meter try and give YCAC a 14-12 lead. It was then left to Steed to finish the job with a piece of individual chip-and-chase brilliance to secure the game and the tournament for YCAC. 
 
Tournament Summary
After 48 years of frustration at the tournament we host, YCAC are currently going through a golden period: 2007 Plate Winners, 2008 Cup Winners, 2009 Cup Winners. One of the things that was especially pleasing about this year’s win is that almost all of the players had a genuine YCAC connection – ten out of the thirteen had played for YCAC prior to this tournament and eight of those ten had played regular (i.e. non-7′s) matches for YCAC. As such, the level of support given to the team by club members was excellent. It was great to see Will Whetstone cap off a fantastic season for YCAC by starting in every match of the tournament. It was also fantastic to see Kane Hancy’s talents recognized by his naming as 2009 Tournament MVP. Hopefully some of the right people were watching and Hancy will be able to follow in Jimmy Maher’s shoes from last year and secure a professional contract on the back of his performance in this event. Finally, congratulations must go to Simon Ryan who basically gathers and manages the YCAC team single-handedly. No-one was happier than Rhino last year when we won the Cup for the first time and no-one would bet against a YCAC three-peat if El Presidente is again running the show next year.
 
2009 YCAC 7′s Team
Nathan “Flash” Ashley
Alan “Snowball” Bunting
“Slow” Joe Fisher (Manager)
Kane “Weasel” Hancy
Maui “Apocalypto” Magele
Jimmy “Night” Maher
Satoshi “Wendy” Nakahama
Futaro “Fu” Nishio
Jonetani “By Chance” Ratu
Ryan “Shotgun” Rogers
Simon “El Presidente” Ryan (Coach)
Waisale “The Little General” Serevi (Captain)
Hayden “The White Islander” Steed
Rich “Impossible is Nothing” Watkins
Will “Crowbar” Whetstone

With a lead up of banter that will be hard to supersede the scene was firmly set for an epic battle, Harry Potter would have been proud of the trickery that was conjured up between the two teams. Yokohama turned on beautiful weather and Epic Battle is definitely the right two words. After months of mainly playing against Japanese teams the step up in defense was firmly felt by all – talking during the week there was a complete reversal on the comments coming out of both sides. It was mentioned that the Europe was under the impression we would dominate them in the forwards and they would match us in the backs – them matching us in the backs was totally reliant on a superstar player known as Tim (Erich Friess) Catlin. The reputation of the player and the confidence the Europe backs spoke with when simply mentioning his name was astounding Tim had been touted as a future England centre but little did they know that Erich Friess had set up a fake email account pretending to be the superstar.

Now one would say that this would be classed as a dirty tactic and slightly unfair but that would only come out of a European mouth with the underlying message they are dirty they didn’t think of it themselves! With Tim firmly in the plans of Europe and Erich feeding the ROW team emails with their trash talk and defensive strategies the ROW team felt they already had one hand on the prized Panty Shield. From the first kick off the tempo was intense and the arm wrestle started to unfold defense was strong but the slick footwork in broken play saw the Kane touch down under the posts. As quick as Kane had scored and Erich missed the conversion the Euro’s hit back straight off the kick off, a misjudged take saw the ball find its way to Will (Crowbar) Whetstone who managed to step through the broken defense and touch down under the posts and continue his amazing try scoring run. Will was later awarded YCAC’s MVP which I think everyone would agree 100% deserved, Will is back to England next month and will be missed but we all hope he can manage to find his way back to the land of the rising sun and YCAC one day.

With two further tries including an amazing intercept by Rich Watkins and try scoring machine Ryan Rogers the score at half time was all locked up. The real highlight of the first half didn’t come from any of the players but the referees ability and creativity to award Europe with a penalty count that had hit double figures within the first ten minutes then finishing off with a ROW disallowed try that only the gods will know if Maui did put his foot on the deadball line or not! The second half resumed an even tougher and gritty match was played due to what felt like 500 scrums within the ROW 22, both sides defended like it was the last match and both lines didn’t look like cracking until big Stevey Gray wound up on the back of some good lead up play to put a big fend on Steve Marcom and crash his way over the line. The penalty count continued to grow and with a penalty try mentioned the ROW scrum fought off repeated attempts for a push over try. With the last ten minutes spent in the ROW 22 and the Euro’s trying everything they could to break the line unsuccessfully time wound down and even with an alleged 3 minutes of extra time the Euro’s finally succumbed for the 2nd year in a ROW (Pardon the pun).

Celebrations between the teams kicked off including the end of year presentation the bagels were done as well as the speeches – overall the day was brilliant, the banter superb and a hard fought match between mates. Now with the standard set this game is definitely going to grow to one of the biggest fixtures of the year, well done to all and for another 363 days the Euro’s are the ROW’s Bitches once again……

Kind Regards

Dean Stallard

In the first-ever rugby match under lights at YCAC the mighty Gents emerged victorious after a hard-fought match with London Japanese.
 
London Japanese are the intelligencia of Tokyo rugby: Educated at Tokyo and Waseda Universities, expats in London, perfect English and jobs with blue-chip companies. They are also canny ba$tards and always come to YCAC with a dirty trick or two up their sleeve. Last year they forced us into uncontested scrums by claiming they had no front-row and won the referee (Steve “The Vicar” Lewis) over with flattery, pretending to mistake him for YCAC’s resident Sex God and Hugh Grant look-alike by calling him “Fraser” throughout the match. This year they again employed a two-prong attack, first pleading lenience leading up to the match by saying that they had a weak squad (but actually turning up with a handful of fit university rugby players as ring-ins) and second organizing for Vicar to go on a “outing” immediately prior to the match where heavy drinking was required. It is relatively common for YCAC members to play matches hung-over but to have a YCAC member actually referee a match while still pi$sed was certainly a novel experience!
 
London Japanese’s devious approach paid early dividends for them and they raced to a 12-nil lead against a YCAC side still half-asleep after the cricket match against Minporen last week and a Vicar who was concentrating too hard on putting one foot in front of the other to apply his normal home-team bias. Luckily these two early tries served as a wake-up call for the home side. YCAC decided it was time to go back to basics and you can’t get any more basic than front-rower and captain for the day, Dean “Fish” Stallard, who scored YCAC’s first try of the match by breaking from the back of a maul close to the opposition line. However, despite Stallard’s try YCAC still found themselves trailing at the break so it was decided to make some changes and introduce super-subs Matthieu “Frog” Vignaud, Will “Crowbar” Whetstone, “Slow” Joe Fisher and Grant “Mr. Normal” Thompson into the match. This injection of fresh legs worked well with YCAC scoring two tries shortly after half-time, one an excellent solo effort from Mr. Normal.
 
These two quick YCAC scores really took the spirit out of London Japanese and after playing an excellent first half they reverted to type and became more English than the English for the rest of the match: Whining to the referee, complaining about the weather and wanting to stop for cups of tea on the sideline every five minutes. With this drop in focus from the opposition the YCAC side took control of the match. It also helped YCAC that their 16th man started to sober up a little in the second half and the flow of the game started to suddenly go in YCAC’s direction.
 
With everything now going their way YCAC finished off the match with a try to Chris “Benedict Arnold” Mander, second tries to Mr. Normal and David “Dixie” Dix. The performance of Dixie was particularly pleasing in this match. After all, it must be fairly psychologically damaging for a 2 meter former Wallaby lock to find himself relegated to the role of lifting a 1.5 meter midget (Mike “Masivo Big Daddy” King) in the YCAC Gents line-out. However, to give credit where credit is due, Dixie has kept turning up and with Masivo Big Daddy out on baby duty Dixie finally got the responsibility he was craving in the YCAC pack for this match. Of course, as true champions always will, he responded with an inspired performance.
 
With the match won it was time to repair to the bar and here again London Japanese proved to be a feisty opponent. After insisting on a right to speak in the aftermatch their representative went on to give a defiant spiel (in fluent English) which included the following gem:
“You may be bigger than me in height, but I am bigger than you in my pants and you may score more tries than us on the field, but we will score more tries than you in Roppongi tonight.”
If this guy had been around for the now infamous d!ck-off a few weeks ago he may have been a bit more hesitant to challenge our manhoods in this way, but with neither Masivo or Sushi present no YCAC players rushed forward to the challenge.
 
We are already looking forward to hosting London Japanese again next year.
 
Joe