Rugby Here & There

Feeling better and better everyday and craving rugby more and more. My team started practice Wednesday night and it was hard to sit on the couch at home when I knew my teammates were out there busting their arses. I can’t start anything remotely active until day 10, so I will continue to rest my body.

I have been using my CPM machine to move my knee for 6-8 hours everyday and that is about the limit of my physical abilities right now. I have also thrown aside the crutches (the gf hates that!) and have started hobbling around the house. The ice machine is still my best friend though as its rumbling soothes me to sleep…read on for some good rugby tidbits, as the web is my fix right now!

• Blog Counter, Broke 50,000!

  Thank you for all my readers out there, we have broken the 50,000 mark! I have worked hard over the last few months to read more blogs and to comment more. In return I have found more readers and have more and more links on my sidebar. I am always looking for new rugby blogs, so email me your blog or leave it in the comments! THANKS!

• USA Women’s 7s Team Raffle
  from Womeneagles.com

  1.7.08 – The USA Women’s National Team is holding a fundraiser to help support the program. They will be selling raffle tickets for a trip for two to San Diego 7s, including airfare, hotel, and tickets to tournament or $1000). Each tickets is a $10 donation or you may buy three for $25. To purchase tickets e-mail USA National Team manager Sadeana Green at sgreen24@yahoo.com. The winning ticket will drawn January 20 in Little Rock, Arkansas at the National Team Try-outs. Thanks for support our national 7s team!

• IRB targets Olympic sevens breakthrough
  By Brendan Gallagher

  The International Rugby Board have not yet given up on getting sevens included in the Olympics but in the murky world of International Olympic Committee politics their New Year’s resolution in Dublin is to start ‘boxing clever’ and play the voting game much more effectively and not simply rely on the ‘rights’ of their case. Read more here.

• Free college gear expected next month
  from Gainline.us by Kurt Oeler

  Applications for USA Rugby’s collegiate equipment program closed this week, and some teams could receive their National Guard-branded gear as soon as February 15.

  ‘At this point the National Guard and [USA Rugby] are willing to kit out every team that has applied,’ Court Jeske, director of marketing services, said in an email.

  ‘We have a 5-week turnaround time from “orders-in” until the packages are delivered. Almost every team should receive their kit between Feb 15-March 1, if they complete the application properly,’ he added.

  As part of a multifaceted agreement, the National Guard is underwriting the cost of uniforms and training and match equipment for hundreds of collegiate teams. The November announcement marked the union’s highest-profile commercial agreement since the 2005 sale of the USA 7s.

• Collegiate Quidditch takes off — figuratively, at least
  By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY

  MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — The broomsticks they hold between their legs can’t help them fly. The Snitch is not a winged golden ball but a young man who sprints across the field at lightning speed. And at times, the game looks like the mongrel offspring of rugby, dodge ball and soccer. But somehow it all works.

  The first intercollegiate Quidditch match was held here this month, and though this version of the game is earthbound, it’s taking off. Originally played by wizards darting about on broomsticks in the Harry Potter novels, the game is now taking root on college campuses.

  “We were all Harry Potter’s age when the books started,” says Sam Libby, 20, a Middlebury College junior geography major from Richmond, Vt. “And Quidditch is one of the most creative things that came out of the books. We were able to create that here, follow all the rules, except the ability to fly. It just caught on.”

  Quidditch surfaced at Middlebury two falls ago when a handful of students gathered to play a rudimentary form of the game on Sunday afternoons, making up rules extrapolated from the books.

  By this month’s Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup Fall Festival, there were banners, team processions worthy of Olympic opening ceremonies, halftime entertainment and 12 seven-person coed Middlebury teams vying for the chance to play the visiting team from Vassar College. Read more here.