Quins hold on against Banshees, improve to 2-0-0.

There are certain inevitabilities in life that none of us can seem to escape. Ray will always forget\bum chew, Kent will insist our conditioning is not up to par (he’s usually right), and the Harlequins will start off matches slow. Only two of those are fixable (sorry, Ray). Our run up to the season has seen some fantastic preparation by our coaching staff. If you haven’t met them…they are left to right Kent, Mike, and Al. A big thanks goes out to Ted Lang, our guest fitness guru as well. I don’t think most of the front row knew what 220 meters was, much less being able to actually finish 5 of them in the same day.

Anyway… back to the match. Ok, so someone forgot to tape the match again, and I’m making this up as I go along. Talk about impossible tasks. Even the Warren Commission had the Zapruder film to look at. In any case, there will be no gunmen behind grassy knolls or slow props not playing to the whistle in this week’s edition. The bus ride up was actually quiet, although I understand that those that had to sleep in the same room as Flounder were not as lucky.

The Minnesota Rugby union instructed our hosts to relocate the match to a sports complex in Blaine. What? You’ve never heard of Blaine? Actually it was a pretty excellent complex with more green grass than we have seen all summer. There were a number of matches going on, college, D2 and D3, so it was a pretty entertaining rugby day.

Now for the game… or what I can recall of it. Unlike Harlequins teams of old we came out crisp and scored two quick tries by Brian Hintz and Sands. Brian must not have been doing all of his 220’s or he left his purse at home, when he converted on Sands try and not his own. Then a strange whistling sound started to come from the mouth of the referee every time we had possession. And damn it to hell if he didn’t take the ball from us and give it back to the Banshees. Apparently this guy was being evaluated that day… and we got the portion of his evaluation sheet that read… “how slow can you make a game”. It reminds of the time, back in my youth, when a certain referee named (name deleted by John Ashcroft due to the Patriot Act) who would slow a game down just to show the players who the boss was. Anybody who can turn a 80 minute match into three hours ought to be doing play by play in the NFL.

Now.. .where the hell was I? Oh yeah… A lesson for all you young ruggers out there. If the referee’s calls aren’t going your way, keep your mouth shut, go back ten, and tackle the heck out other team. We didn’t do any of that… and a sin bin and bunch of rolling mauls later…and the Banshee’s were on the board. I can’t recall who got the sin bin, but if you were considering buying George a shirt for Christmas, I would NOT buy a yellow one.

We recovered better in the second half and the MEN of the match, the front row for the Harlequins, took over. They are the good looking group of handsome guys who always finish dead last in sprints… unless it’s to the supper table. Our pack dominated the second half… and due to a valiant effort from the home team, we took the lead back and then endured an agonizing final 5 minutes inside our 22. I won’t say our kicking was terrible, but SHANK steak was on the menu at the Old Country Buffet… and everyone had their fill that day.

There was one heart stopping moment when the Banshees drove a try from the line-out that would have made an uncomfortable score line even tighter… however, the touch judge (who incidentally enough played for them but had enough integrity to make the right call) signaled that the ball was not thrown in straight. A few moments later the whistle sounded and the rest is history.

Our regular season record now sits at 2-0-0.

The Blaze are on deck for next week. Please, PLEASE fix the camera for that match … I can’t be this funny every week.