2011 Awards Eclipses Previous Awards Ceremonies

10th December, 2011.

70+ members, WAGS, friends and kiddies gathered at the Beer Station in Ebisu for the annual awards dinner of the Tokyo Gaijin Rugby Football Club.  The night went off without a hitch and all were in festive spirits after a very memorable year; both good and bad, and people even filed outside between 10:30 and 11:40 to witness a lunar eclipse that was pre-organised for the event.

2011 has been one that was set to go down in the history books as it was the 20th Anniversary of the team.  The history books were destined to take a more sombre note given the events that unfolded on that fatelful day, 11th of March.  All members, families and friends were safe but events had changed many perspectives.  Several team stalwarts still look back fondly on the day spent together in Yoyogi Park 1 week after the Earthquake, ensuing Tsunami and Fukushima incident.  However the season eventually became one of the TGRFC’s best in a number of years.

The team played in a shortened Tokyo Cup and will continue to play in the 1st Division in 2012, won the Shuto League 1st Division and Oakwood Cup, made the Shuto League 10`s playoffs and also made it to the Philipines for the Manila 10’s in the middle of a crisis.

* In one of the games there were no posts so all tries were unable to be converted.  5 tries were scored in that match

There was a total of 42 try scorers for the year from a total of 87 players.   In the year 2011 there was also a huge number of countries that were represented by players in the Tokyo Gaijin.  They were;

South Africa, England, Japan, Fiji, U.S.A., Basque, New Zealand, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, Indonesia, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Scotland, Wales, Croatia, Uganda and Samoa.

The Awards for this year were as follows:

Top Try Scorer / Top Try 2011 : Joseva Nawaqavanua, FIJI (19 from 8 games.)

Dirtiest Player : Gaz Dalrymple, SCOTLAND

Best and Fairest : Dan Worden, NEW ZEALAND

Most Improved : Bryan O’Brien, USA

Special Awards for Assistance and Support of the team:

Satoko Nakayama, JAPAN        Lucy Ballard, CZECH REPUBLIC

Hannah-Lyn Kochi, USA            Shino Iwasaki, JAPAN

Hitomi Kurosawa, JAPAN          Rina Ueshima Ramshaw, JAPAN

Manager’s Award : Natsuhiko Kunitomo, JAPAN

Honourable mentions for Mosese Rarasea and Gaz Dalrymple.

Captain’s Award : Liam Ramshaw, ENGLAND

Honourable mention for Tsukasa Takasugi.

2011 TGRFC Runner – up MVP :

Toshi Miyano, JAPAN

2011 TGRFC MVP :

Shinichiro Nakayama, JAPAN