We did it! Congrats to John Smit and the boys! Awesome work in winning “the first tryless test between [England and South Africa] in 101 years” - it was a tense affair but what a pleasure to be world champions. They have been going nuts back in SA… congrats to all! (I should also mention that John Smit, one of the 6 World-Cup winning captains, went to the same high school that my brother, father and I went to: Pretoria Boys High School! YEAH!)

South Africa beat Argentina 37-13 in the World Cup semi-final this past Sunday to secure a final berth against surprise finalists England. It will be a rematch of the pool game which England lost 0-36, but I have no doubt this will be a far more difficult game! Go Bokke!

I’ve been fortunate enough to collaborate with some others to help put together a new rugby video website, RuggerVids. Please check it out and send me feedback! Special thanks to all the tech team, and Sam and Ivan. We’re very excited to have the site up and hope to continue to refine and improve it over the coming weeks and months — we hope it will get lots of use during the World Cup starting next month!

I’m about to embark on a few rugby-related ventures which I will tell people about in this and other forums, but in the meantime I realized it was 10 years since Dartmouth’s “final 4″ dream of that particular year was cruelly ended in State College, Pennsylvania by a sudden-death overtime try.

I dug up the story I’d saved. Bittersweet memories - but what a great team, wonderful group of players. That camraderie never goes away. BTW Doug Burnaford always points out that it wasn’t his pass, it was a skip pass from our flyhalf, Mark Oldham (’99) that was intercepted….

Rugby Magazine, 21 May 1997

UC Davis 26, Dartmouth 21
by Krista Hawley

State College, PA
April 19-20, 1997

There is no good way to lose, but the way Dartmouth was sent home from the Pool D championship by Cal-Davis seemed more cruel than most. After making up a 21-point deficit to send the game into overtime, the Big Green came up short, falling 26-21 in sudden death.
Close calls were the theme of the weekend for Cal-Davis, which watched a 33-point lead against Navy shrink to four points before pulling away to win, 62-29. Dartmouth made it to the finals in a simpler - if less exciting - fashion, beating Rice, 58-14. But Saturday’s semifinal action was nothing compared to what was in store the next afternoon.
The sudden death overtime began with the score deadlocked at 21. Cal-Davis had the advantage of playing with a strong wind at its back and all but one of the game’s tries were scored by the team playing with the wind.
Neither side had approached the end zone when, less than five minutes into the extra period, Dartmouth took a gamble that didn’t pay off.
Dartmouth was on the attack around midfield when scrumhalf Doug Burnaford took a chance on a long, cross-field pass. Cal-Davis center Michael Ortiz read the skip-two pass, picked off the ball and never looked back.
“It’s really not a good way to lose, especially in a game when we were so well-matched,” Dartmouth lock Rob Leathern said. “It seemed as if the story was not finished.”
Although the ending was not what Leathern may have had in mind, the saga between Dartmouth and Cal-Davis was a page-turner from cover to cover.
The first half was all Cal-Davis. Aided by a strong wind gusting downfield, the Aggies kept the smaller Dartmouth team on the defensive. Seven minutes into the ame, Cal-Davis opened the scoring when #8 Kevin Henderson broke into the end zone after several attempts by the forwards to pound it in from the 22-meter mark. Fullback Dan Orton then made the first of his three conversions. Sixteen minutes later, Cal-Davis flyhalf Scott Lopker split the defense with a 20-meter run that brought the score to 14-0.
With the help of a wind-aided kicking game, the Aggies were able to keep the pressure on Dartmouth, leading to a Cal-Davis try by scrumhalf Justin Fornelli, 21-0.
But Dartmouth would not be written off, and got a lift going into halftime when Burnaford came around a ruck and went 15 meters for a try. Fullback Mikael Morn sent the conversion through the uprights and the half ended with Dartmouth trailing 21-7.
Riding the momentum of Burnaford’s try and with the wind at their backs, Dartmouth continued their comeback in the second half. Dartmouth’s strong kicking and quick backs pressured Cal-Davis, but the Aggies pack held their ground until center Craig Smith scored in the 12th minute. Morn hit the conversion and Dartmouth was within seven, 21-14.
For the rest of the half, neither team was able to convert their opportunities. Then, with less than ten minutes to play, the Dartmouth backs spread the field rather than trying to power the ball up the middle. Wing Dave Miller found the end zone, and Morn’s angled conversion tied the game, 21-21.
Cal-Davis had the ball in Dartmouth territory, trying to end the game in regulation time, but neither team would yield. WIth the wind at their backs in overtime, Cal-Davis wrote the final chapter and moved on to the Final Four.

Cal-Davis Dartmouth
———— ————-
Guintini 1 Vandenberg
Thum 2 Tengan
Naugle 3 Thibeault
DeWeese 4 Leathern
Niklewski 5 Payne
Brown 6 Whitcher
Terry-Lloyd 7 Himoff
Henderson 8 Magleby
Fornelli 9 Burnaford
Lopker 10 Oldham
Pahulu 11 Whiting
Ortiz 12 Dimblad
Cates 13 Smith
Castagnola 14 Woods
Orton 15 Morn

We are all set for an all-SA Super 14 Rugby final this coming weekend between the Bulls and the Sharks in Durban. Awesome, a real first for South African rugby! Let’s hope the final is not a dour affair and we actually see some running rugby!

Unbelievable- the Bulls had to win the game to make the semi-finals of the Super 14, which was always going to be likely against the woodenspooner-Reds languishing at the bottom of the table. Interestingly, if the Bulls won by more than 45 points it would mean traveling to New Zealand for the semi-final BUT if they could win by more than 72 points that would mean they would end second on the table on points difference and have a home semi against the Crusaders (who lost again this weekend surprisingly). Each player was promised a R5000 bonus if they were able to reach the 72-point margin apparently.. and amazingly, they achieved it and set a Super-rugby record for the largest margin of victory in a game when they won 92-3 over the hapless Reds.

The final try where the ball bounced perfectly for Jaco van der Westhuyzen capped the evening and an awesome victory.

The Bulls pulled out an amazing last-gasp Super 14 win at home today with a try after the hooter. Nothing like it. Here’s a video from YouTube that makes the point, much as I like Football (soccer) it’s hard to argue with this…

With the exception of (my hometown team) the Bulls, the South African sides did very well in Super 14 rugby this weekend. One has to feel the Bulls squandered too many chances in going down 27-30 to last season’s wooden-spooners the Western Force. I agree with the South African commentators that the Bulls’ second half performance was “lethargic”, and a revitalized Western Force team took full advantage. Cameron Shepherd and Matt Giteau looked in good form for the Force and helped them overturn a 17-9 halftime deficit at Loftus. So that was disappointing to me (!), but I really did enjoy watching the Sharks beat the Highlanders.

Before I get to that, with many All Blacks missing due to NZ World Cup training, the Crusaders (last year’s champs) went down 9-3 to the Lions at Ellis Park. Wow… although there were no tries scored in the game it’s quite an upset. So thanks to a 30-26 win for the Cheetahs over the Waratahs we now have two South African teams at the top of the log after three games. I don’t want to get too excited since things have often gone horribly wrong when we have to play away, but it’s certainly shaping up to be a fun and exciting Super 14 campaign. There is a lot of “clean up” to do among the play of teams like the Cheetah’s and Sharks but with some great new talent coming through the ranks and getting used to the pace of Super rugby, I remain optimistic.

I have always liked the style of play of the Sharks — and not least since I’m a supporter of fellow Boys High old boy John Smit — they always have an air of excitement and possibility about their game. Montgomery was awesome with the boot, under the high ball and in the backline and scored all 23 points for the Sharks. There are certainly questions to be asked about the Sharks’ finishing ability as they created many scoring chances right from the first whistle, but hopefully a lot of that is just early-season stuff (remember the first game vs. the Bulls for both teams!). As usual Keo.co.za has a great wrapup of the game and rightly points out one of the highlights of the game as Bobby Skinstad’s return to the South African game as a late substitute. I do think I saw him drop one important tackle that contributed to the Highlander’s late clawback try, but nonetheless it’s great to have him back in the fold.

For the rugby fans who find their way to this blog, I’ll be revealing some new rugby-related projects I’m working on in the near future, so make sure you subscribe to my feed and stay tuned! BTW lackluster is the US spelling and lacklustre is the UK spelling

The USA leg of the IRB Sevens World Series currently underway in San Diego has been a well-organized, highly entertaining event for US rugby fans. The venue for this US sevens tourney has been The Home Depot Center east of Los Angeles for the past several years and is being held for the first time at Petco Park (home of the San Diego Padres baseball team). Despite my initial skepticism, I’ve found the baseball venue with turfed-infield to work very well and the crowd atmosphere in the stands has been great.

South Africa lost a hard-fought quarter-final game to Fiji in sudden-death extra time, despite having a man advantage at the end. The game was dirtier than the average sevens game and featured a yellow card and a red card on the Fijian side. Once the tournament concludes today, look for further thoughts from me on the event and the game in general.

I read the article in SA Rugby a few weeks ago that included the following photo of Richie McCaw and the undisputedly-best-rugby-team-in-the-world right now (yes I admit it even as a South African!) New Zealand “All Blacks” wearing pink jerseys! Story here.

Image is ©Getty Images / Ross Land

The All Blacks players each wore a “`maillot Rose” for a commemorative photograph taken with players from the Stade Francais squad at their training ground in St Cloud, south-west Paris.

This contrasts quite a bit with the Adidas poster that contains blood from all the players mixed into the ink. Each player gets to decide what to do with his jersey - I’d love to see if any of them turn up on eBay though it is doubtful. I’d love to get my hands on one of them…

I was excited to see on YouTube one of the best tries (that’s rugby for “touchdown” in a way) of last year scored by anyone, let alone someone playing for my hometown team, the Bulls (Pretoria, South Africa). Bryan Habana is widely regarded as one of if not the fastest player in world rugby. Enjoy!

Five tries to three for NZ, at altitude in Pretoria. We (South African) turned in what is becoming a nasty habit of a very two-dimensional performance; a good start saw SA head out to an 11-3 lead but the composure and energy of this very deep New Zealand squad are unreal. They are such huge favorites for the World Cup in France next year, hard to see any other side that compares though we have seen good flashes from the Australians. One has to say that SA has an uphill battle to get it together especially in the backline; it is so frustrating to have one of the fastest and most exciting players in the world on the wing (Bryan Habana) not getting the ball very much and when he does, going sideways under a lot of pressure from a sliding defence. *sigh* And not to mention that for this, I woke up at 6am on a Saturday morning!

While we are on the subject of rugby, here is a cool license plate I saw last week in New York City.

I was able to get over to Stanford to watch the California-BYU national championship rugby final this Saturday. It was a very entertaining game, standing-room only, in which BYU were unlucky to lose 29-26 after a great comeback. I thought the referee missed a blatant offsides call at the end, which would have allowed BYU an easy kick and overtime. He missed a few offsides calls I think. A few observations about the game and college rugby in general:
- The quality of the game at this level was good, (two very good sides) as well as what I saw last fall with Army beating Dartmouth in a very close and hard-fought game, are sure to attract new players to the sport. the problem is that the exposure of these types of games is so miniscule compared to mediocre college football. More must be done here - but rugby as a sport could definitely take off in the US; also, as more happens at the grass-roots high-school level we’ll see far better skilled players doing well in college.
- Cal were clearly very well coached and did a much better job of spreading their defence and not over-committing to the breakdown. This discipline wore down somewhat in the second half.
- US College rugby is somewhat deficient in the flair department; BYU actually showed a little bit of it in several exchanges, but this is an overall problem with the game out here.
- Referee was okay, despite a few missed calls he was decent, but touch judges were fairly poor IMO, missing plenty of late tackles and the abovementioned offsides calls I believe. There’s a lot to be done here — it needs to be a more professional outfit.

US rugby is at a cross-roads with some of the problems at the senior level and lots of promise at the lower levels, but it needs to be taken up a notch and more needs to be done to get promising football players and other good athletes in the high school ranks (a few good players I played with were converts from ice hockey, for example) to give the game a try. Once we can make it less about the “meathead” mentality and more about excelling at a challenging, tough and exciting sport (like the teams we saw this weekend approach it) US rugby will be able to step up to the world stage.

Well, it’s not much of a contest in rugby (with SA dominating) so it’s only fair that we’ll get our ***** handed to us in baseball. I didn’t even know South Africa had a baseball team (!).

It’s inevitable that while the number of TV channels can probably only increase linearly, there is an explosion of broadband sports content available online now available. This also allows niche content like rugby (my favorite) to reach a wide audience — I’m able to see every single “Super 14″ rugby game (best teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) every weekend. Basically these are just TV feeds that are digitized and put into an online-ready format. One pays a per-access fee of $4.99 or $130 per year. It’s a great deal. (BTW they don’t allow people who live in one of the countries that get the direct broadcasts to subscribe… a very BROAD blackout!).

Interesting thing I saw alongside the rugby is an advertisement for the US Short Track Skating competition — I’m not sure if this is something that will be shown on regular TV at all given the recent interest generated by the Olympics, but with high-speed connections proliferating, we’re only likely to see more niche sports content available and ever more pay-per- revenue generated.

The barriers to almost anyone putting up pirated feeds are getting a lot lower though — so I could just as easily be watching a pirated feed from the TV station in New Zealand…

Spent the weekend up at Dartmouth, where the Dartmouth Rugby Football Club dedicated the new fields and facilities that students and alumni spent several years raising funds and fighting zoning restrictions for. It’s now undoubtedly the premier collegiate rugby venue in the US. The field is amazing, not to mention the beautiful New Hampshire Fall views that are part of the package!