All France, all gone.

The first league match pitted the Gaijin against the All French, an outfit that had been quite recently, as worded by Joffa Harris, ?fried? by the Gaijin in a match earlier in the year. Boosted by the return of Rob Reinebach from duty in Durkadurkastan and Niall Conlon from flag toting duties in New Zealand, the Gaijin were probably in better shape than what they are usually in after a long summer of beers and ice creams. The Gaijin also had two debutants in Alastair Nimmo and Sean O?Donaghue, both boasting impressive rugby resumes, the absence of point machine Ian ?Daniel Carter/Shadow? Roy was all but forgotten.

The game kicked off in quite sweltering heat, an unfortunate consequence of having the later kick off! The tries came almost from the outset, with the Gaijin crossing the line numerous times in what was shaping up to be an impressive performance from the backs. The blistering heat also did very little to disturb the forward pack who were dominating the French scrum with a performance usually reserved for a cool winters day. The halftime score was well indicative of the end result.

The second half rout began rather shakily with the French getting their second (and last) wind, it proved to expose the Gaijins ?half time holiday? mindset with the 10 or so minutes of defense taking it?s toll on some of the forwards feeling the heat. Once everyone caught their breath, it was business as usual as the Gaijin closed out the match with a 60+ point victory, due to the size of the score line, everyone seemed to forget the number of conversions actually made or who actually scored the tries.

In the end it proved to be a good debut for Alastair Nimmo who put in a sharp performance, along with a return to the try scoring books for Joffa Harris who bagged two. New boy Sean O?Donaghue announced his presence with a try with other big forwards Takayuki Kitajima, Yukio Suyama and Rob Reinebach adding tries to the mix with the rest of the tries coming from the backs, Captain Blake Walker, Jonathon Dean, Tomohiro, Takeshi Takeda, Takashi Mutou and Heats Devlin.

Team for the day;

1. Mark Pearson

2. Yukio Suyama

3. Takayuki Kitajima

4. Chris Lucas

5. Jesse Cutler

6. Dave Kelver

7. Joffa Harris

8. Rob Reinebach

9. Alaister Nimmo

10. Takashi Mutou

11. Takeshi Takeda

12. Jo Iwasaki

13. Jonathon Dean

14. Heats Devlin

15. Blake Walker

16. Shaunne Hughes

17. Mauro Sauco 

18. So Nagashima 

19. Arno van Bossche

20. Tomohiro

21. Steve Bull

22. Niall Conlon

23. Ryoichi Matsumura