Neuchâtel Rugby 7’s Tournement 2011

The story begins on the Friday night before the tournament. The 15 players from Rugby Club Zug were out for a drinking session in Aegeri. We were due to leave for Neuchâtel at 7.30am on Saturday morning…….this plan however did not really work. On Saturday morning we left Zug with only 4 players. Not only were we short a lot of players but we were running late. Our first match was at 10.30 against Zurich GC. After some crazy (life threatening) driving from Beat, we arrived at Neuchâtel at 10.25. We drove past all the tents and camp fires and finished with a handbrake turn onto the side of the pitch. We jumped out and ran onto the pitch grabbing a couple of players from Nyon and Bern. Understandably we lost against Zurich GC, but also unfortunately Eugene twisted his ankle while making a try………..Now our team was down to 3 players.

Our next game was not until 3.30pm so we had time to set up our tents and meet and greet the other teams. Our friends from England (Rugby Club Richmond Saxons) offered to lend us 5 players, RC Luzern gave us 3 and also RC Bern gave us 2. Suddenly RC Zug had a squad of 13 players!!

Our second match was against RC La Chaux-de-Fonds. This was a closely contested game. We did think we had won, but later found out there was only one try difference.

Our third and final match on Saturday was against Botafogo. We did lose (but not by much). Botafogo ended up winning the whole tournament.

Now the first days rugby matches were over everyone could begin the evening of singing and drinking. As you can imagine things got messy.

Last people to bed was about 6.00am…..

Sunday morning the tournament recommenced at 8.00am. Our first match was at 8.45am against Zurich Union……..only 2 of us managed to crawl onto the pitch from out tents. It was then announced on the speaker system that we required 5 more players. RC Neuchâtel were kind enough to lend us some players. We won the match even though the players from Neuchâtel were playing in their underwear. One guy from RC Neuchâtel scored the try of the tournament……he still had on last nights baby hat, a giant plastic dummy, skin tight speedo’s and flip flops…….he managed to out run four Zurich Union players!!

Near the end of the first half, last nights beer and wine caught up with Denis, which resulted in him being sick on the pitch. He did however received the loudest cheer of the tournament from the crowd as he crawled off.

The rest of Sunday was a lot more fun, we played lots of games for Zug and for other teams as many people had hangovers. One guy was getting married soon and therefore his team made him play a match with a sheep tied to his leg. Very amusing. Beat hurt his knee in the morning, but that did not stop him from playing four games in a row for various teams. A true Rugby hero!!

We finished 18 out of 20 from the tournament, considering we had only 3 players that’s not bad at all!!

Overall it was a great tournament, we would like to thank the organizers from Neuchâtel for hosting the event and look forward to seeing, playing and drinking with the teams again next year!!

Denis Kaya

Bishops Cup 2011 – St. Gallen

We arrived in St Gallen on Saturday morning only to be greeted by terrible weather. Most people would say it was raining ‘cats & dogs’ but honestly it was more like ‘hippos & elephants’. At the arrival desk we inform the organizers that we only had 5 players (this was a 10’s tournament) but would still like to play and would just borrow a few players from other teams. They explained that a 3 teams had cancelled just the night before and therefore to save having problems with an odd number of teams they would take RC Zug out of the tournament but that we could act as roaming extra players for the other teams.

Due to the re-organizing of the tournament schedule the first set of morning games were cancelled. So between all the teams we organized a set of friendly games. Our first match was with Winterthur against a new Italian side (their name escapes me) which we won rather convincingly. Winterthur were very happy with our performance and wanted us to continue playing with them for the rest of the tournament. They renamed the team ‘WinterZug’ which was great.

Our next game was against Zurich Union. Again we won.

The rest of Saturday was spent playing for München, Neuchatel & Bern.

Saturday evening was great fun. St Gallen had a Canadian band playing pop/rock then followed by a DJ playing hip-hop. RC Luzern were dressed up like ladies (as per usual), Winterthur went for the Richard The Lion Heart/Crusades outfits, and I swear I saw Batman at some point during the night. I don’t remember a great deal, all I know was at some RC Zug was on the stage dancing like crazy.

Sunday morning while eating our breakfast we check the information board. WinterZug was in the quarter-finals!

Our next game was against the tournament favourites RC Varese who had won both their games on Saturday 68-0 & 38-0. We knew this was going to be a hard game if not impossible, but we just got on with it. The game ended 19-14 and Varese were clearly shocked that another team had even got some points against them. We felt a bit disappointed considering there was only one try between us. Varese went on to the finals. I am not sure if they won as we left just before the match started.

The best part of the tournament was playing with Winterthur. They are in the league below us but will be joining us in our league next season. We very much look forward to playing rugby with them next season.

In summary it was another great weekend of rugby. Thank-you to the organizers, we will see you next year!