RC Zug vs RC Winterthur

Final Score: RC Zug 24 – RC Winterthur 35

*Please first read the review of the St Gallen tournament from july for some background information regarding our newly formed friendship with Winterthur.

A few days before the match we received an email from Winterthur asking for the match to be made one hour earlier as they had a friendly game afterwards with RC Lichtenstein. They also invited us to bring a bigger squad with the idea that some Zug players could play in their friendly.

What I got from the email was “We have a huge squad now enough to play two games”…………I was not wrong.

We arrived at Winterthur with only 16 players, three of which were already injured. On the plus side, the weather was good and the pitch looked great.

The game started well with Zug starting to rack up the points with great kicks from Little Antoine and Bogdan. Winterthur came back hard, but we finished the first half with a reasonably good lead. Even though we were having problems in the scrum, we were in a good position to win the match.

 

The second half though was a different matter. Cracks started to show in our team in all areas. As Winterthur started to gain more points we began arguing amongst ourselves. Negativity is contagious and before we knew it Winterthur were ahead. Then disaster struck, Dani ruptured his collateral ligament in his knee (he will not be able to play rugby for the rest of the year).

At this point Winterthur started making substitutions. Five players with fresh legs just ran rings round us. We finished the last few moments of the game with only 14 players.

When we came back to the changing rooms after the match there was a crate of beer waiting for us. I would like to point out that these were large bottles…..brilliant. After showering, we were taken to a BBQ area were we received some tasty chicken and a potato salad.

I must commend Winterthur for their line-outs. Very well organised and clearly they practice this a lot in training.

We would like to thank Winterthur for their hospitality and look forward to playing them again later on in the season.

RC Zug

RC Zug vs RC St Gallen

Final Score: RC Zug 35 – RC St Gallen 0

Arriving at our home pitch on Saturday was like walking into a war zone. The circus had been in town all week and had left our field looking like Beirut in the early 80’s.

On a positive note the weather was really good and even though we were missing a couple of key players (Claudio, Nico & Bogdan), we welcomed back Big Antoine, who has played for Zug for many years and is already in our ‘Legends - Hall of Fame’ while still being active player.

Also back on the team-sheet was Denis, who fractured his wrist two weeks ago. The Doctor said no rugby for at least five weeks, clearly he has no idea how hard Zug rugby players are!

The game started with St Gallen pushing hard. We beat them last season, so clearly they wanted some payback. A few times St Gallen made it within two meters of the try line, but every time Zug held strong. St Gallen did manage to get a penalty kick, but they missed it.

In the first half we were losing most of the line outs, but by the second half Alois must of grown a couple of centimetres as we seemed to sort this problem out. Our scrums were tighter than a ducks bottom, surely we broke some sort of record with the amount of balls won. The hooking from Denis was on fire.

Once we started scoring tries, the game was over. Two of the tries in particular deserve a mention.

The first was created by Seb, he ran the entire width of the pitch (yes I said width) and then turned around and ran all the way back again before deciding to actually run forward, he broke through several defenders only to be caught just before the try line. Then he made a simple pop pass to Alois which resulted in a try.

The other was clearly the try of the match. Simon (aka The Beast) blasted through about six St Gallen defenders and then without looking made a world class pass to Roman who dived in for the five points.

Also worth a mention was the kicking during the game from Little Antoine. We gained a lot of ground with his precision kicks.

A special thanks to Elio and Jeff who did wonders in the forwards despite both being injured.

As you have just read, it was a real team effort in this match which paid off with five more points for the league. Next week we take on Winterthur, where we will be looking for a good win also. Zug is now in a strong position in the league which looks good for the rest of the season.

We would like to thank St Gallen for coming and look forward to playing them again later on in the season.

RC Zug

The President's Speech

Bericht: Zentralschweiz am Sonntag vom 18. September 2011

RC Ticino vs RC Zug

Final Score: RC Zug 20 – RC Ticino 21
After a long journey through the Gotthard tunnel (luckily not much traffic) we arrived in Bellinzona to warm sunshine and a wonderfully prepared pitch. Also there is a beautiful castle overlooking the whole valley. Bellinzona’s castles are considered amongst the finest examples of medieval fortification architecture in Switzerland.

The game kicked off with Zug on the defensive. Ticino racked up 9 points just through kicks alone as they could not break past our defence. It was not until Zug scored the first try of the game that the match started to get interesting.

The second half started just as the weather began to change and Ticino pushed hard in the first few moments. Now the grey clouds had moved in and the heavens opened up, most of the second half was played with hard rain.

Their full back (who had crazy long hair) was one of the fastest runners I have seen in a while. He managed to slip through our defensive line a couple of times in the second half.

Overall we had the advantage throughout the match by winning majority of the scrums and line-outs. There were some minor mistakes made on our side during the game, which considering how close the score was, probably lost us the game.

At this point I would normally thank the opposite team for welcoming us to their pitch and hosting the game but this time I don’t think I will bother. In 18 years of rugby I have never come across a team with as little respect for the game as RC Ticino. Biting people in the rucks and also pushing and shoving other players trying to start a fight just because they made a good tackle is simply not what rugby is about.

You might think that this review is written with sour grapes because we lost, but I would point out that last season we had several near losses, most famous against RC Lausanne, in which we were gracious in defeat.

We look forward to our next meeting with them which we plan on teaching them a lesson on how to conduct themselves on the pitch and also in the pub afterwards.

We are always humble in the eyes of defeat no matter how close the score is.

RC Zug