Tackles - no thanks!?

I felt great yesterday! Our Sävja session included both rucking and mauling - how I’ve been waiting for this! Managed to work myself up to proper rugby rage and eventually started bellowing instructions right, left and centre so as to get things happening (preferably my way).

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I wasn’t always this fond of contact training. In fact, I remember vividly my first ever tackle experience and how big a brain freeze I got just then. It was early spring 2007 and I’d been on the team for a few months during winter season, practicing ball handling and playing touch. I’d FINALLY realised what Bettan wanted when she was screaming DEEP, go DEEP for heaven’s sake! (and was pretty pleased with that too). In the middle of our touch session, coach Richard suddenly shouted OK, full contact now everyone!

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WHAT!?

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The killer faces on these people when they were suddenly allowed to take eachother down! God, that scared the shit out of me… For the next ten minutes I was skulking around in the background, pretending to be planning my next move but really just desperately hoping that no one would come up with the stupid idea to pass the ball to me. It wasn’t even tackling someone else that was my biggest fear – it was being tackled. After training I cried because I was so disappointed with myself. Why did I suddenly become such a bloody delicate flower when, a year earlier, I was perfectly happy to have people kick me in the face down at the dojo? (Well, at least happy to have them try…)

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My point is, even if you think you don’t have it in you to start with, even if you’re scared of hurting someone else or just reluctant to let five teammates pile up on top of you, you can start to love it. Just like I did.

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(By the way - I haven't seen the men's team do tackle training since...ever. Are ya' scared? No wonder that opponents slip through the defense!)

The launch of a new PR-era

I think 2012 seems to be the start of a new era. Once again the ladies team has found itself lacking numbers and experience (it's an every-other-year thing) and the club as a whole has lost both it's big sources of income (the bandy finals and the reggae festival). No money and no players - clearly, something needs to be done.

As a first step towards something else (wherever that might be) the club has decided to work harder to get noticed. So far we've seen public displays of lineouts and recruiting at a shopping center, flyers put up in town and this old blog of course. Two fairly new additions to our PR network is the registration on Sportwire, where we can put video clips up from training, games or the likes and hopefully get noticed, and our Facebook page - brand spanking new!

This weekend our club house was full (yes, FULL) with people celebrating St Patrick's and watching the last round of 6 nations. I think it's a good omen.

Håckes Cup 2012

So a couple of Uppsala ladies went down to Växjö and Håckes Cup. Big deal.

But hang on a minute... Why are they dressed in black and white? And how the hell did they manage to pick up a southern accent in just two days!? Ok, it goes like this:

When Uppsala tried to sign up for this tournament they realised they were too late (by months). It was jam-packed with quicker thinking teams and those of us who'd hoped to play in blue stripes had to let that idea go. When we found out there was a window of opportunity to participate as guest players for the Trelleborg team some of us were tempted. As we're not holding a grudge against any penguins whatsoever we decided to go black and white for the weekend - and it turned out to be a good choice!

Apart from meeting a bunch of new gals and quickly getting relaxed around eachother (sorry I didn't lift you in the lineout, had to improvise because I was dying for a shit...) we experienced several memorable moments.

1) Realising that you can still have a try denied by the ref for unsportsmanlike conduct. Gothenburg, what were you thinking?

2) Being put in the scrum together, because the props in the first half claimed we needed some "bigger and stronger" girls in there. (None of us can boast more weight than 65 kg, incidentally only half the size of Scotlands no 4 Richie Gray)

3) Hearing yourself unintentionally scream in the worst imitation of a Skåne accent ever!

I expect we would also have heard a lot more screaming and swearing from the stands if this wasn't the case from time to time:

Lunchtime, sunday