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I have no idea what this picture is of, but I got it off of Mark's CPU. Here, I'll try another one!
After the Olde Towne antics, the Actonians set out to find if all of the sex, drugs & rock and roll rumors of Polish nightlife were true. They later commented that they felt like fat kids in a paczki shop!
Meanwhile, a group of rag-tag Frogs met on Foksal to make sure we didn’t get too much of an edge over the soon-to-be extremely hung-over Actonians. A certain young member of the Ravensdale family bought the first round: an entire bottle of Jameson poured into a pitcher and mixed with a splash of Coke. Needless to say, our eyes widened and reddened and mouths gaped and filled with drool. We were sitting outside the patio at Tam Tam chanting “Tom! Tom!” Soon the fine wait staff had had enough of our drinking and singing and hinted that we should send our raucousness someplace else. On our way across Rondo De Gaul, British Ben noticed a blow-up doll straddling the palm tree in the middle of the round-about. Dipping, dashing and diving through traffic like a real-life game of
From there it was down Plac Trzech Krzyzy passing the famous Spilka, Sparka, Spolka restaurants. On the patios lining the street were a hundred or so people enjoying a
Saturday afternoon saw three extremely hung-over teams stumbling to Skra just in time to get suited and booted and throw their bodies on the line in the blazing hot sun. For the first game, the Frogs faced off against the Actonians, and though the Actonians’ fly-half couldn’t kick-off to save his mother’s life, we somehow got the match rolling. Unfortunately we needed to whore on a scrum half and a fullback from the Welsh team, and these were the players that proved to be the weak link letting two easy trys go through. It really wouldn’t have mattered much except for the fact that we lost the game by exactly two trys! Isn’t rationalizing great?
The next game was a heated competition between the two touring sides. As the smell of alcohol sweat, rotting teeth and old socks wafted from the Welsh team, there was no question as to who had the upper hand at the beginning of this second match. Sure enough the Ausie, Kiwi and Sith African strong Actonians got to an early lead and kept slamming it in. Tired, hung-over and losing, a Welsh player was seen giving a frustrated “O’ Doyle” style head-butt to one of the Actonians, which was followed by a resounding “BOOOO!” from the crowd.
As usual, the Frogs were well up for it during the final match against the Welshies. After repeatedly pounding the ball down their throats, scoring try after try and basically taking the piss out of them during the first half, the Welsh team did something this writer has never seen in his 12 years of playing rugby: they forfeited! Again the knackered and soon-to-be defeated Welsh couldn’t take it anymore and refused to walk back onto the pitch after halftime. The Frogs and Actonians on the sidelines, seeing that they had brought 40 guys on tour and still couldn’t finish a match, were dumbfounded. Captain Fergal Buttimer was furious and demanded monetary compensation from the team. It was never given.
At the BBQ following the tournament, the Bone Cruncher award was given to a player from each team for excellence in hitting. AK-47 (a Romanian national with 23 caps for his country’s national rugby team) received the award for the Actonians for nearly putting me into a coma, Jeff (the only Welsh player to have any gas whatsoever) received the award for Abertyswygg, and our own monster Mr. G collected the award for the Frogs (though we would still like to see him hit during games with the same intensity as he does in training). “Down in One You Zulu Warrior” was the soundtrack to their award ceremony.
The date was the weekend of May 2nd to 4th. The venue was SKRA stadium,
The teams began turning up on Saturday morning looking somewhat bedraggled but ready for the group stage. Unlike the previous year, fortune favoured the 10s as it stayed warm and dry making it good Domo was in his element doing a great job of MC-ing the event from his “command” tent. His dulcet tones echoed across SKRA for the entire two days.
Some of the usual suspects were playing including the Spaniels, a rag tag bunch of whoever is not too drunk to play – although that didn’t stop some.
After the first day, the Frogs finished with a clean sheet along with the Godfathers, an ex-university team from
The Saturday night venue was Browarmia, and the drinking and willing man in tight leather trousers to help him in his efforts siphon-the-python.
The Sunday, saw more great
The effects didn’t go unnoticed by one spectator. Apparently a member of the Polish delegation to the UN Security Council, he was suitably impressed by the power of fifteen naked drunk Belgians. He was overheard saying that he’ll raise this in the UN assembly next week and wants to consider deploying groups of naked drunken Belgian Rugby plays to major conflict zones around the world. High priority would be to send them streaking through the streets of
The blistering pace of the 10s started to catch up on Domo as he was caught taking a nap whilst standing up – oh and smoking. However, Domo came to life when he spotted one of the players on the “Refs” team who had a bigger belly than him. Domo is quoted as saying “I’m not judging the man on weight but mine is firmer than his. His one just flops down”. Let’s hope he was just referring to his belly!
The final was played out between the Frogs and the Godfathers. The Frogs played hard and were the crowds’ favourite; however the boys in black prevailed and won 21-5. In the evening everyone retired to the Boathouse, for more beer, more food, medals and honours and the charity auction which combined with the whole tournament raised 20,000 PLN for charity.
Since then the Frogs have not been resting on their laurels, and played last weekend against a touring team from
Frogs v Old Brentwoods
A water logged SKRA pitch was the venue for the game against Old Brentwoods, and although the tourists were greeted by cold drizzly weather, they were on high spirits as they sported dyed hair, wore an array of ladies underwear and were clearly under the effects of recently consumed alcohol. The Frogs were also in fine form with almost 30 players turning up to play.
The game kicked off at
After more tries from both sides, Old Brentwoods were only a try down going into the closing minutes of the first half, were within a blade of grass width of the Frogs try line. They tried in vain to hammer against a stoic and resolute Frogs defence to even the score, but the half time whistle blew without success.
The second half started, and Kevin “Badknee” – our illustrious coach – began a phased substitution in order to bloody some new players in the club and get everyone some game time. The Frogs scored a couple more tries but Old Brentwoods began creeping back into the game. Whether it was the effects of the alcohol wearing off or that the Frogs had almost swapped out the entire starting line up is open to debate, but what was certain was the Old Brentwoods started playing with more conviction and success.
A good spirited game was only marred by one sending off. Christian, who refereed the second half, yellow carded Kiwi Mike (instead of himself this time), for descent and general Kiwiness.
So with a last minute surge from Old Brentwoods, the game finished with the Frogs losing by a last minute try.
At one point, an injury scare in the last ruck of the game saw Lance “The Maine Event” struggle off clutching his arm in pain. Rumour quickly spread that it was a suspected broken arm and Antoni, unhesitatingly sprung into first aid action by trying to push two broken branches onto Lances damaged arm. It turned out to be a false alarm, and although Antoni’s enthusiastic action were rejected by Lance (and laughed at by others), he’s been spurred on by the idea and now wants to create his own brand of natural first aid solutions. Apparently he’s already started researching the idea of using beach pebbles as anal suppositories and tree bark to treat third degree burns.
With both teams cleaned up, all descended on Bradleys later for tea and crumpets. The competitive spirit continued with drinking games against each other. Boat races as per usual, run the Gauntlet and the blow the playing card off the top of the bottle game.
Mr G found himself with 25 fingers to drink (that’s two and a half pints in real money) and did so heroically, although he was so full of beer by the last mouthfuls, it looked as if beer would start seeping out of his eyes. Sean, again, also was maxed out on his turn and took himself to the gents (that’s bathroom in US English) to offload his burden.
By the time the Frenchies played “run the gauntlet”, their penalty beers were not being as actively policed by the
Great day had by all, especially Fergal, who was spotted wearing this outfit, and overheard telling a gullible American tourist that this is what people in
That was the week that was, and the Frogs couldn’t have asked for a better way to officially kick off their 2008 season than with a comprehensive victory against Juvenia’s Second team.
Prior to the main body of players and wags (“Wives And Girlfriends” to those who don’t know) arriving on Saturday, an advance party of hardcore troops had already deployed to Kraków by Friday night in order to conduct a reconnoitre of pubs, bars, kebab shops and any other seedy establishments – these vital details can be as important as players remembering to bring their boots.
So, on an overcast chilly day in Kraków, Frogs from all directions began arriving at the Juvenia ground. Marcin flew in from the
At one point, fear of being late for the game spread among some arriving players as they entered the changing room. It turned out to be a false alarm and apparently was triggered by the sight of Sean Doyle lacing his boots before other players – apparently a rarity in Frog circles. After all were kitted and booted a brief warm up got the men’s spirit pumping, Kevin and Fergal conferred on last minute squad selection and our injured players Christophe and Andy Grimes were left on the sideline to give moral support to their team-mates’ women while their men were absent. Thanks lads for your unerring support.
So at
Second half started off well with Fergal, Sean, and Boris now playing for the Juvenia, so it was no coincidence that Juvenia start to pick their game up and score tries. However, the frogs continued to persevere with solid play from Sebastien, Ben and of course some crunching tackles from Mr G. In the latter part of the second half, play was interrupted when the scrum collapsed dangerously. Fergal immediately gave some enlightening opinions to the referee, Christian, about the situation of an uncontested scrum. Fergal, renowned for his composure in these situations had a somewhat calm and philosophical air about him when explaining this to the referee. Upon thanking Fergal for his kind words of advice, Christian made
Post match awards in the bar saw, Dan “the whippet” Ralph deservedly awarded Man-of-the-Match, even though he proceeded to down his celebratory beer in womanly fashion. A penalty boot-shooting was awarded however and he bravely choked it down.
To round off a great day of rugby, the Frogs celebrated with a great Saturday night in Kraków.