West LAU Tournament Results and some Pics

This weekend was the 2008 West All Stars Local Area Union Tournament at Gateway Park in Ft. Worth, TX. Four teams from across the West arrived in Ft. Worth to battle it out and play their best for the selectors. Mark Bullock (West 15’s Head Coach), Wendy Cook (West 15’s Assitant Coach) and Laura Hertel (West 7’s Head Coach) were in attendance to select players for the West All Star Senior team to compete at the NASCs in June.

Gateway Park has some amazing facilities, but don’t try to sneak in gum, Gatorade, sun flower seeds or other food/beverage items! They have strict, strict rules when it comes to outside beverages and food, so it was fun to see players stuff their bags with food and then bust it out when they weren’t watching!

So the day started off with Texas playing Missouri at 9am. The Texas Rugby Union was comprised of players from Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana. The Missouri team included teams from Missouri and Nebraska? I couldn’t find any information on the Missouri Rugby Union website, so I am just grasping straws here.

The game was very highly contested as both sides had good strong packs with plenty of experience in them. Missouri scored first with a strong run up the middle, taking advantage of a few missed tackles. After this the scoring was very back and forth as Texas would score, then Missouri would score twice and Texas would score again to try and catch up. The game ended with Texas putting in three scores to button up the score and take the win.

Pictures from Ashley “Shalay” Mefford here.

The second game of the day was Eastern Rockies Rugby Football Union vs the Heart of America. The ERRFU select side team includes teams from Colorado and Wyoming. The Heart of America team includes teams from Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

This was another great game as the Heart had big strong forwards that really wanted to ruck and work hard to get the ball. However the Eastern Rockies team liked to move the ball wide and into space, and the Heart was not able to stop the wide attack. Towards the end of the game we though the Heart might make a come back as they were able to score a few tries, but they couldn’t quite get it in there.

From here the teams had quite a big break as the next game was at 4:30pm with Heart vs Missouri. This game was an outright battle as the score stayed at 7-7 for quite some time. The ball stayed mainly in the middle of the field as each team forced knock-ons and mistakes but couldn’t quite capitalize on the mistakes. Good hard runs by both teams were brought down just short of the tryline and good tryline defense made scoring impossible. Towards the end of the game Heart was down by a try and had several good drives towards the line, but a hasty whistle by the official squashed their hopes of a try diving win.

The last game of the day pitted the Eastern Rockies team against the Texas team. Since the Rockies had such a strong showing at last years West LAU Tournament, Texas really wanted to have a good game to show what they could do. The game was very evenly matched with excellent defense on both sides. The backlines were literally flying up in each others faces and the ball rarely made it out past the OC as the defense was stifling.

79 minutes into the game it was still 0-0, it was a good clean game with plenty of oohs and aahs from the crowd, but neither team could put the ball down for a score. The game ended in an almost anti-climatic tie as the ref blew it up and there was not interest of overtime from the abiding officials. Several players were overheard saying that they would have kept playing since it was such a good game…

Pictures from Ashley “Shalay” Mefford here.

At the end of the tournament, selections were announced for the Sunday camp and for the team traveling to Glendale, CO on May 10-11, 2008. The West team will play the Midwest All Stars twice and this will also be broadcast from Infinity Park.