It’s All Gone Quiet Over ‘Ere

Back to a Kizooch Field at Tobu-Dobutsu-Koen that had metamorphosed from last year’s infectious-disease-transmitting swamp into a semi-arid dust-bowl, to play in a mini-tournament that supposedly aided in some way Japan’s national deaf rugby side in their preparations for the upcoming World Cup in Wales.

For Tokyo Gaijin, this meant two half-hour runarounds against a couple of handy teams, which serve as a good Tokyo Cup interlude for those players who had nothing to do over Golden Week. (For the uninitiated, Golden Week is a succession of national holidays and nothing to do with an extended spell of dubious sexual practices. Unless one’s name is Heats Devlin, in which case it’s both. Probably.)

Handy team number one was MGS and they were decent enough to go ahead 7-0 against Gaijin’s makeshift lineup which among other alterations saw regular inside-centre Niall Conlon transformed into a hard-hitting blindside flanker, and a new centre-combination of Jonathan Dean and Dean Eliot. However, with Mauro Sauco and a returning-from-injury Joffa Harris both rampant, their lead was cut pretty quickly following a bullocking try from the former, before being overturned into a 3-point lead following a good piece of driving forward play and a show of strength from Dave Kelver (who had earlier consigned his opposite number to the dustbin of rugby history with a tackle hard enough to be punishable by death in some Arab states. Or Texas.)

The Gaijin scrum was dominant, with the euphemistically veteran Mark Pearson and Yukio Suyama and Jesse Cutler prominent. The 10-7 margin of victory flattered the opposition despite Gaijin never really moving out of first gear.

Handy team number two was The All Quiet Typhoon who made up for their aural shortcomings by hammering the shit out of us. Gaijin spent about 4 minutes out of 30 in Typhoon’s half, and 2 of those followed a bustling run by Mauro Sauco which left a trail of near-dead requiring medical assistance. Whilst Gaijin matched Typhoon at the set-pieces, they were no match around the rucks and mauls, and were made a bit of a mockery of by some Typhoon backs who had a knack for spotting gaps and then vanishing through them. Typhoon later said that it was the match against Gaijin that they were most fired-up for, and this was reflected in the fact that they won the match 24-0, and only beat the other side (whom Gaijin had earlier disposed of) by 10-7.

The post-competition slap-up and booze was certainly nicer than the customary 7-hour old onigiri from Tobu-Dobutsu-Koen Station’s convenience store, and served as a timely reminder that post-match beer will always be nicer than the watered-down, lower-taxed, rat’s-piss-substitute that masquerades as a tipple in this fair land. Cheers to All Quiet Typhoon, and all the best for the World Cup.