In their quest to discover how to increase excitement and try-scoring, the IRB should make a detour to Yamate. The Captains of YCAC Gents and Itochu agreed to halves of 25 minutes which produced a try-feist of 84 points in the space of 50 minutes.

The first half was a real contest. Although they were no youngsters, Itochu had two or three class players who performed very well whilst their energy levels were high. Fortunately, the Gents had borrowed a couple of First Team wingers and Willy (2) and Kenji finished off dazzling inter-changes to see YCAC going into half-time with a narrow lead of 19-14.

Now there are some players who inspire fear in the opposition and give renewed courage to their own team. When you see a star player like Richie McCaw or Dan Carter stripping off his tracksuit at half-time, his team-mates are compelled to reach even greater levels of performance. There are some super-subs who have this awe-inspiring effect… and there are others that don’t…

And so the hearts of the Itochu players sunk to their boots as they saw 62 year old Mike “Doddy” Galbraith strip off to join them on the fields of Yamate to face his former friends from YCAC. Whether it was the dismay of Itochu or the galvanising effect on YCAC, the Gents scored 33 unanswered points during Doddy’s 20 minutes on the pitch. Most miraculous of all, Mike King finished off some electric back-play to score 2 tries. Arnaud also helped himself to a brace. The Itochu Captain realised his error and after substituting Doddy for the last 5 minutes, Itochu stormed back with 3 tries of their own to make it a nail-biting climax.

Special mentions go to Noah “Pass-A-Lot” Pflaum who demonstrated tremendous maturity in his distribution whilst jettisoning his early season nickname of “Crowbar”. And to JD Junior aka “The Tiger” who demonstrated a great sense of timing in arriving on Saturday so his father could be available for the game on Sunday.

Steve

YCAC 1st Team
The day after a wedding is never much fun, it’s even less fun when you arrive home at 10am after an all-night bender and have to play rugby in a few hours on a warm and muggy day. And so it was on a fine Sunday when the two young bucks of the team Noah “the New Crowbar” Pflaum and Brimmin “Brutus” Frazer rolled up to YCAC in a sickly state after celebrating the renewed vows of YCAC stars Dean “Fish” Stallard and Tristan “Inside Centre” Fahy the previous night.

With the start of the game having to be delayed as a result of Erich “Freezer” Friess requiring a crane to help him remove the new rugby jersey that he tried to squeeze into, there was concern that the team may have been underprepared at kick-off. Indeed, Freezer had only just come off the oxygen tank to take his place on the field after not being able to exhale for a full 15 minutes while he strutted around fooling himself that the jersey could actually fit him. Luckily, any concerns over the team’s preparation were dispelled with a fine team try almost immediately from kick off.

From that point on the YCAC forward pack totally dominated the opposition with the ever youthful Brendon “Cheese” Timmin’s having a storming game until he faked an injury to rest up for a night with his wife who had been out of the country for the past few months. Let’s hope Cheese’s war cry of “bend, bind and bulldoze – both on and off the field” didn’t cause the injuries off the field which he inflicted on the field against the Fellows. As a result of one of Cheese’s crunching hits, an early halftime was called with Morning Star/Zen Capital/Magellen Financial Planning/Herbert Lewis YCAC leading 35-0 to allow for yet another injured Fellow to be fixed up. By this time Brimmin and Noah were both suffering from cracking hangovers and looked worse than the guy being attended to by the paramedics.

There was no let-up in the second half and YCAC continued to pile on the points at will. The YCAC forward pack had so much sympathy for their opposites that they decided to make things easier by not contesting any rucks or mauls all the while standing out in the backline. The forwards could not be blamed for this tactic, particularly because tighthead prop and captain Freezer elected to spend the second spell at flyhalf during any play which wasn’t a scrum or lineout. When requested to stick to front row play, Freezer’s terse reply was “I’m the f*ckin captain here and I’ll stand where I f*cking well like” and that’s exactly what he did. An interesting array of moves were brought to the backs by Freezer including “drop the ball one metre out from a clear tryline”, “pass the ball to me and I’ll make sure it won’t get passed to anyone else” and the long lost “hospital pass” which he pulled off with remarkable execution.

Special mention must go to the replacements for Dean and Tristan (who were away celebrating their second honeymoon at a Hakone onsen) – 85 year old hooker Scott “Five Bellies” Sizemore and inside centre Yama Yamaguchi. Sizemore never took a step backwards and won plenty of opposition ball at scum time while Yama ran strong lines all day to put his outside backs into space. Finally, a mention needs to go to Noah who pulled off an individual match haul of 33 points despite not remembering a single minute of the game once he had sobered up.

Willie