2007-08 Guinness Premiership

Well, here we are in late April, just off of a World Cup year, and you know what that means, the Guinness Premiership semifinals are coming up! This has been not been the best of seasons for Newcastle fans. The Falcons are currently holding their own at tenth place (out of twelve teams) and have lost their last seven games. Of course, statistically speaking, Newcastle has been out of the running for weeks now, but getting beaten 53-10 at Edgeley is never easy to watch. Having an injury list that includes Flood, Noon, Wilkinson, and Tait doesn’t help, either.

Right now it doesn’t look like anybody’s going to be able to catch Gloucester. I don’t really know that much about Gloucester I guess, except for Mike Tindall and Chris Paterson, but for them to get pushed out of first place they will have to lose both of their next two games and Bath will have to win both of theirs. I mean, I guess that isn’t all that crazy to imagine, but I still think that it’s statistically improbable. In other words, if you were to gamble on it (and you should) I don’t think you’d make that much money.

Speaking of all this, I got to play a little rugby this past weekend, myself. After the official match, AU hosted what’s called a “motley” which in this case was just a game that involved a bunch of AU rugby alumni playing against Calvin College’s B side. Man, that was fun. Apparently this is just Calvin’s second season to have a rugby club, but despite their inexperience, they played pretty well. Throughout the whole game, a general sense of courtesy seemed to prevail, which I think is an appropriate way for all rugby games to be played, but especially games against a young team like Calvin. I hope it felt like a “welcome to the game of rugby” sort of a thing.

I haven’t gone to MAC alone in about two years. In about two weeks, everybody that’s ever gone with me will be graduated. It looks like my attendance will end similarly to how it began.

-Ryan