Steve “The Vicar” Lewis wears a number of hats at YCAC – referee, fixtures secretary, sponsor and occasional advisor on Japanese criminal law to name just a few. However, it often seems that the role of pre-match pundit is the one he enjoys the most. For this match his suggestion to “Slow” Joe Fisher was that the opposition would be weak and we should therefore encourage a few of our 1st XV players to skip this game in order to avoid a mismatch. Slow Joe dutifully followed these instructions and told 1st XV superstars like Steve “Big Cuzzy Bro” Gray and Rich “Fabio” Watkins to take the weekend off. When YCAC then found themselves 21-5 down after 20 minutes Vicar’s pre-match analysis was looking like a real dog’s breakfast and Slow Joe tells me was already trying to think of a clever one-liner to serve Vicar after the match was lost. However, 31 unanswered points later it had to be admitted that Vicar’s forecast was spot-on. This was bloody lucky for Slow Joe because the chances of him actually coming up with a clever one-liner are virtually zero.

Don’t let those 31 unanswered points mislead you into thinking that this was an easy match though. YCAC enforcer Erich “Freezer” Friess started the match in perfect health (apart for a raging hangover that had him dry-heaving through most of the warm-up) but finished it with a cut mouth and a golf-ball sized lump above his right eye. And Freezer was not the only guy in the wars. Yasushi “Sushi” Fuji, back in Japan on holiday, suffered an absolutely massive concussion and had to be taken to hospital immediately for a brain scan. Luckily it revealed nothing.

However, despite putting up a good fight, Sunday 31 January 2010 ultimately ended up being a disappointing day for Sanyo rugby. At the same time their ‘A’ team was going down to the YCAC Gents at Yamate, their ‘B’ team (the Sanyo Wild Knights) were on the way to losing the Top League final to Toshiba at Chichibunomiya. This strategy of splitting resources was obviously not a success and I would suggest that Sanyo need to make a choice next year on what they really want to achieve – the Top League crown or a win over YCAC.

“Kill” Bill Baker finished off a great day for YCAC by destroying Sanyo’s best player in the Man of the Match drink-off. I am very pleased to note that since I took over the match reports from Slow Joe four weeks ago and started drawing attention to YCAC’s dismal drink-off performances we have not lost a single one. The new strategy from the YCAC ‘brains trust’, which I thoroughly support, is to ignore entirely deeds on the field when selecting the MVP and simply pick the best piss-sinker present. As such, Kill Bill’s bullocking second-half performance in the midfield was entirely incidental to his receiving the award.

Hunter Hemingway