News 2010

Adelaide 7s

SARU are accepting nominations for players from SA clubs to be involved in some activities over the Adelaide Sevens weekend. 
If you are interested and want to be involved in any of these activities, contact Sue Thewlis 
• Friday 19 March: Parade of Nations, opportunity for 12 year old players (16 in total) to carry a competing teams national flag Each child will receive one adult and one child GA ticket. 
• Saturday 20 March: Tug of War for senior players in Sevens Central Precinct with Final to be on Adelaide Oval (one team of eight plus team manager per club) Winning Club receives a keg of Coopers Pale Ale or pack equivalent 
• Sunday 21 March: Fastest Club Man Race, one senior player per club on Adelaide Oval. Each runner will receive one GA ticket. Winning runner receives $100 Kukri voucher

Superhero Saturday!!! 
Don’t forget to dress as your favourite superhero on Superhero Saturday March 20th!! Grab your mates and dress up for the chance to win a Gilbert pack for the club. 

Stewart Frew

At the end of 2009, Stewart Frew resigned from his role as OC's Director of Junior Rugby. Naturally, he will continue to be involved as a coach, a father and a supporter, and for that we give thanks. 

Stew has done an amazing job over the last few years. The great legacies of his Junior Committee are that: 
- the junior and senior clubs are now linked and moving ever closer, rather than the isolated silos we were only a few years ago, and 
- the parents have been brought into the club in record numbers which not only adds to our immediate culture and environment (and coffers) but will undoubtedly also bear further fruit in years to come in the form of more volunteers, better involvement etc. The best any Administrator can ask is that he leaves the club in a better place that it found it 
– that he took the ball forward. Stewart can most certainly make that claim with pride. 

On one hand, we farewell Stew with some sadness. On the other hand we are delighted that Simon Macklin has stepped into the role of Director of Junior Rugby in 2010. Simon has been the Deputy Director of Junior Rugby throughout Stew’s reign. Simon’s passion and his knowledge of our boys, our game and our club are second to none and we are smugly confident that our kids are in great hands. To continue the rugby metaphor: Simon has picked up the ball, and we predict he’ll be over the gain line before you can say “up yours, Burnside”.

Kim Evans
AGM 2009

Photography competition 2010

"Old Collegians' is looking for all those budding photographers out there, as well as those of you who have managed to capture a fantastic fluke shot. In 2010, we’ll be asking you to send us your favourite photographs of Old Collegians' (particularly playing shots, but not necessarily exclusively so). Photos will be uploaded to the website and our webmaster will pick his favourite each week of the playing season to be displayed prominently on the website and in our clubrooms, with the lucky photographer also winning a prize. At the end of the season, we will pick the best photo of the year for a grand prize! Watch this space for more details soon – comp starts in April/May." ... TT February 2010

2009 Juniors' Scholarship winners

left: Nathaniel Linder-Patton - Howard Clay Scholarship
 right: Falaoa Tuimaseve - Joyce Spry Scholarship

2009 Scholarship Winners Nathaniel (Nat) Linder-Patton and Falaoa (Norman) Tuimeseve had a brilliant time at the Brumbies Camp. They trained hard, learnt new drills and skills, saw the Brumbies train, met Stirling Mortlock and Steven Hoyles in person, talked to most of the Brumbies team during their training session and came back tired, bruised, battered but well worth the experience and very grateful to OCs for the opportunity.

Newsletter Editor

Together with her role as Club Prez, Kim Evans has been the newsletter maestro for a number of years & for 2010 has passed this over to the capable & willing Elena Casciano. 

El's introduction from the February Tregenza Times:

From the Editor 
 Collegians, it’s with pleasure that I introduce myself as the newsletter editor for 2010. I’m a little nervous about presenting my version of the truth to you throughout the upcoming season partially because I’ve never been a newsletter writer/editor before and mostly because I feel that I have some fairly large shoes to fill.
 On a personal note and as a senior player, I am very excited about season 2010. Having been present at the 2009 AGM and my first committee meeting, I’ve been able to listen to the discussion about the future of Old Collegians' RUFC. There are some exciting things in store for the club and some interesting stories to tell. I’ll be asking frequently for any news and photos to publish in the Tregenza Times so if you think you’ve got anything worth telling (embarrassing, funny or informative) please don’t hesitate to share over a beer or an email to news@oldcollegiansrugby.org.au 
 We’ll also be running a photo competition throughout the season with a prize to make it worth your while so read on (the February TT) to find out more. If you see me around the club and have any feedback about the current issue of TT, please let me know (good or bad). I won’t punch you in the face, I promise. 
El

Elizabeth 7s

The date of the Elizabeth 7s has changed from the 6th of March to Saturday the 27th of March.

Coaching Courses

Wednesday 24 February: SmartRugby Course at Tregenza, 6:30pm – 8:30pm

Sunday 28 February: Foundation Coaching/Refereeing Course at SARU, War Memorial Drive

Email kim@oldcollegiansrugby.org.au ASAP to register

Bar's open

THURSDAY NIGHTS AT O.C.’s

Don’t forget that the bar is open again on Thursday nights from 6pm and you are very welcome to come along for a drink and to see the boys in action under our new coaching panel.

We will be having monthly drink specials in 2010.

This month we are introducing two new beers into our range, so come along and enjoy:

Coopers Clear on tap - $3 Pints

Coopers 62 Pilsner Stubbies – $4 Stubbies

Vodkas – 2 for 1

Adelaide Sevens Luncheon

Friday 19 March, 1pm – 4pm

KEYNOTE SPEAKER; NICK FARR-JONES

$150/person (three course meal, beer, wine & soft drinks

Email kim@oldcollegiansrugby.org.au ASAP to sit on the Old Collegians table.

IRB 7s Ticket Draw

Enter the IRB 7s Tickets Draw:
 1st Prize: 2 tickets to a corporate box on Sunday 21st March 
2nd Prize: a family pass for Sunday 21st March 
3rd Prize a family pass for Saturday 20th March

Simply come along to the Junior registration day Sunday 28th February 2010 at Tregenza Oval 
Bring along your updated and signed ARU registration form & completed and signed medical form 
Bring a copy of the relevant birth certificate 
Pay the relevant fees 
And your details will be entered in the Draw

Register your details with Simone Linder-Patton, Juniors' Registrar. 
(Only applies to players who bring all forms updated, completed and signed by a parent, have a copy of their proof of age and pay full fees on the registration day)

INVICTUS - movie night

1.20pm, Sunday 7 February 2010

$15, Piccadilly Cinema, North Adelaide

Tickets are available to a special screening of the new movie “Invictus” starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon which tells the true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa's rugby team, Francois Pienaar, to help unite their country. All profits go to help send the SA Warriors, or state women’s rugby rep team, to the Nationals in June in Canberra.

RSVP as soon as you can to secure your seat – places are limited.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9Ovkye6lac

The Man in the Arena:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." 
Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne, April 23 1910

Invictus

Extract from Invictus not averse to playing with facts, by Wayne Smith 
The Australian, January 25, 2010 

"IT's a bit self-defeating for a critic to point out there is one minor thing wrong about the Clint Eastwood-directed movie Invictus - that this "true story" about the 1995 Rugby World Cup is actually based on a falsehood. In the movie, Nelson Mandela, newly elected as president of South Africa after having been imprisoned for 27 years by the apartheid government, presents Springbok captain Francois Pienaar on the eve of the World Cup with a copy of the William Henley poem Invictus that helped sustain him during his long years in jail on Robben Island.

It's true that the poem, best known for its stirring conclusion, "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul", did provide much solace to Mandela on the island. But it wasn't Invictus that he gave to Pienaar just before the tournament. Rather, it was Theodore Roosevelt's The Man in the Arena.  The self-defeating part of all this from the perspective of a nitpicking journalist is that this Roosevelt speech begins by putting smart arses like me in their place: 
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better," it states. "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming."

What's disappointing is that the same care that went into the casting of the two principals wasn't extended to selecting the supporting cast of Springboks. Surely in all of South Africa it cannot have been difficult to find a dozen or so more convincing rugby players. But while the rugby scenes were well shot and would have given US moviegoers in particular an insight into what football without the body armour is really like, they still did not do justice to the pace, intensity and ferocity of genuine Test rugby. In one scene in which a Western Samoan defender takes out a Springbok player with a marginally late hit, the tackle is portrayed as fairly hard. In fact, there is nothing fair about ever being tackled by the Samoans. They hit not just to hurt but to rearrange every bone in your body. What was almost laugh-out-loud funny about the movie was that the Springbok players threw the ball around like the Barbarians. In fact, then, as now, the South Africans kicked like mules and with about as much subtlety. Indeed, the core tactic they employed in their tournament-opening victory over Australia in 1995 was to constantly hoof the ball over the dead-ball line, pinning the Wallabies in their own territory by repeatedly forcing them to drop out from their 22.

By far the most glaring, if understandable, omission from the movie is that no mention is made whatever of the famous All Black claim that they were poisoned by a South African waitress, Suzie, two days before playing the Boks in the World Cup final. Granted, it's not difficult to understand why Eastwood sidestepped the ongoing controversy of whether Suzie, supposedly bribed by a gambling syndicate, seasoned the New Zealanders' meals with something a little stronger than garlic and thyme.

..... the unembellished history of those times border on the incredible. To think that a man imprisoned for so long would not only forgive his Afrikaaner jailers but then actually use their secular religion, rugby - the brutish sport of a brutish people, as one commentator put it - to help unify the Rainbow Nation, strains credulity all on its own, let alone once Hollywood has schmaltzed up the facts. Still, it's hard to get overly excited by any movie that has as its happy ending a Springbok World Cup triumph."

SENIOR PRE-SEASON TRAINING

SENIOR PRE-SEASON TRAINING

Tuesday 9 February and Thursday 11 February 2010

Training starts this week! All players are expected to attend regularly. Attendance, attitude and payment of subs will be a precondition to playing in 2010. All non-players are reminded that the bar is open again on Thursday nights and if you’d like to come along for a drink and to see the boys in action under our new coaching panel you’d be terribly welcome!

SMART RUGBY SESSION

Wednesday 24 February 2010

A Smartrugby session has been booked at Tregenza Oval with SA Rugby Union. Attendance at this, or another Smartrugby session, is required for anyone who wishes to take a hand at coaching in 2010 and is strongly encouraged in Managers as well. Of course, anyone else who wishes to attend is also very welcome! For more information contact juniors@oldcollegiansrugby.org.au

JUNIOR REGISTRATION DAY

Sunday 28th February 2-4pm

All Junior players are invited to attend at the clubrooms on Sunday 28th February to re-register for 2010. For details, contact juniors@oldcollegiansrugby.org.au

SUPER 14 FOOTY TIPPING

We’ll be running a Super 14 Footy Tipping Competition again in 2010. More details will be emailed soon.

Cairns Old Crocs

The Cairns Old Crocs Over 35’s rugby festival is held in September each year. 
In 2010, the event happens to fall one week prior to the World Golden Oldies Festival in Sydney.

Ins & Outs 2009