The Little Rugger

Wednesday May 6, 2009

Ronan started rugby training today after school. After meeting his coach, Carlos, he discovered that there were two mates of his from school, Reuben and Jack, in the club. The "Under-Seven's" Club (aged four to six years old) plays nonthreateningly barefoot, but they're required to wear mouth-guards. Just watching the entire lot of them running around with often ill-fitting and jutting-out mouth-guards provided jocularity enough, however the training itself was the real treat.

Ro's first rugby practice

In the first practice game, the team was divided in half, with one half given belts to wear to denote that they were team Stripe. On the non-striped side, Ronan would've gotten a "try", or score, right off as he caught the toss from a teammate and bolted down the field ahead of everyone---except he was going sideways OFF the field, through parents, etc... with all the kids following him, instead of DOWN the field. It was priceless. However, all of the boys proceeded to catch a toss and run the wrong way, or toss to the wrong side at one point or another. After the first practice game, they spent the majority of time on skills training, learning to toss to each other correctly, and also to correctly touch a teammate to "tackle", instead of actually tackle, as most seemed wont to do.

Ro giving chase

Invariably, toward the end of the practice, kids were dropping like flies and just lying down on the field to rest before getting their last wind and rejoining for the end-of-practice game. Most of them, like us, had come to the park right after school let out at 3, and had been already running around for nearly and hour and a half before practice had finally commenced at 4:30. Ro and Sherry walked the klick home from Blake Park, and the entire way Ro was complaining of being tired, sleepy, and hungry. Indeed, once home, he ate an entire pear, half a carrot, a big bowl of pasta, a banana, and got treated to a cup of Hokey Pokey ice-cream for dessert. All of this within 30 minutes of getting home. Even then he wanted "more pasta", but Sherry wisely gave him a glass of milk, bathed him, and put him to bed. Usually up by 6 am, he slept in until 8, and would've slept longer, but Sherry had to wake him up for school for the first time in recent memory. Thank goodness for the 9 am start time!

Ro sacked out hard Thursday morning