Here was the tournament format and schedule:
FDNY v. Fort Bragg
NYPD v. Camp Lejuene
FDNY v. Camp Lejuene
NYPD v. Fort Bragg
Camp Lejuene v. Fort Bragg
I was appointed the head referee for this event. I had one Canadian referee, one military referee, and one Met NY referee at my disposal. I assigned myself the FDNY v. Fort Bragg and NYPD v. Fort Bragg games. Every game had a team of 3 working it.
To start off, I want to describe the trip to the field…Randall’s island…overlooking the Hudson river and Manhattan.
One other referee, Fort Bragg, and myself stayed at the Hotel Edison one block from Times Square. We met outside the hotel to wait for the Fort Bragg van to pick us up and take us out to Randall’s island. It eventually arrived and we all crowded into the 15 passenger van only to realize we had about 1/8th a tank of gas and didn’t really know how to get there! At this stage one of the tourney organizers got on the phone with our NYPD rugby brethren…..and the NYPD said they would come help us out. Little did we know what kind of help that was on our way….A few minutes later an unmarked cop car arrived, the cop stuck his head out the window and said “follow me!” He proceeded to flick on his siren and take us blearing through the streets of manhattan! Traffic and red lights were no match for us and the NYPD! Cars moved out of our way like Moses and the red sea! I now think I am of the privileged few to have experienced this…it was like a scene straight out of a movie.
We arrived at the field around 1130. DRASH had tents set up for every team and Matt Godek had kit specially made for every team! Including the referee team!
Before the first game I ran over to see the referees for the NASC sevens. This included the national panel of 7s referees as well as a number of Met NY referees serving as assistant referees and in-goal judges.I had my pregame / equipment chat with the teams. Because of the level of these teams (D4-D3 men) I decided to make clear recent clarifications of law laid down by the IRB:
Maul obstruction
Productive hands / diving over
No collapsing mauls
Matching numbers in lineouts
We moved onto the captain chat and went for kick off. It was a close game with it coming to a draw around 10 minutes into the 2nd half…but following that Bragg put in a few extra tries to widen the gap and win handily.
Now I have a few notes from the game:
A couple Met NY referees whom I met at Saranac Lake watched the game and had some great observations for me. They said that when I would blow for a penalty…after my whistle had gone a few things would generally keep going on that I missed….because when I made my mark for the penalty I had this habit of looking down at my foot at the mark…instead of surveying the field. The mark’s not going to move…I don’t even need to look down at my foot once.
Also, he observed that I was maybe getting a little bit too close to the breakdowns to allow myself to have consistent full field vision. This is a habit that I have been trying to eliminate so it is good to know I had somewhat gone back to old bad habits.
Also, I think I need to make myself a mental pregame checklist. When I referee from week to week I typically clearly remember what to work on and watch for, but when I have weekend breaks between games I sometimes forget and in my pregame warmups I forget what I really want to watch for and improve in my game. Recommendations?
Game 2: NYPD vs. Fort Bragg
By this time of the day (4 PM) the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. I tried applying some of the tips from earlier in the day and recall it making me feel more comfortable…it even made me catch a couple sly punches. I was very proud of the way I handled this punch up as I had struggled managing them earlier this spring (see old reports). As soon as I saw the prop tussle begin I blew a very loud long whistle, called the two players over and sent them both off to cool off for 5 minutes for “police brutality.” Both teams replaced their front rowers and sent off different players from the pitch to maintain contested scrums.
I should also comment that the scrums were quite…marginal…this game. The Bragg boys were murdering the police scrum even to the extent that I told the Bragg boys to back off in the scrum so we could get some flow to the game. At the start of the game I had a hard time believing how much the NYPD scrum was buckling even to the extent of penalizing and free kicking Bragg for foot up and boring. They may have indeed been doing this, but the problem only went away when I finally took the captain aside and told them to back off.
This game had similar score lines and events to the first (FDNY, Bragg) with the NYPD coming within 3 points of Bragg in the 2nd half only for Bragg to run away late in the show.
During this game I had a first, my Adidas boots of about two years finally gave out. I recall my feet landing feeling particularly soft and slippery for a reason I could not figure out during the game…only did I realize afterwards that my entire left foot was basically sliding out on the turf!
For the last game of the day Bragg played Lejeune, Lejeune came out the winners and therefore Liberty Cup 2009 champions. They had really taken it to all the opposition on the day and were clearly the fittest and most well rounded side. Bragg may have had a few more skillful players, but Lejuene certainly won with the fitness and organization game.
From here I was invited to the NY All Star sevens referee dinner at Connoly’s pub in manhattan. It was great to meet, eat, and drink with our country’s top sevens referees and assessors.
Since my boots had split in such spectacular fashion the day before I made no attempt to AR on Sunday despite being asked – instead going for a delightful English breakfast in Greenwich village
From there I hopped on the subway and went across the footbridge to Randall’s island to watch the rest of the sevens rugby. West won the Men and Northeast won the women’s division with some very entertaining games. Following the tournament I had the opportunity to meet and drink with a number of USA rugby celebrities including Dan Payne and Al Caravelli on our way to BBR…the tournament bar. I stayed for one drink, bullshitted a little, and caught the train to grand central and back up the Hudson river home. What a great weekend.
Maul obstruction
Productive hands / diving over
No collapsing mauls
Matching numbers in lineouts
We moved onto the captain chat and went for kick off. It was a close game with it coming to a draw around 10 minutes into the 2nd half…but following that Bragg put in a few extra tries to widen the gap and win handily.
Now I have a few notes from the game:
A couple Met NY referees whom I met at Saranac Lake watched the game and had some great observations for me. They said that when I would blow for a penalty…after my whistle had gone a few things would generally keep going on that I missed….because when I made my mark for the penalty I had this habit of looking down at my foot at the mark…instead of surveying the field. The mark’s not going to move…I don’t even need to look down at my foot once.
Also, he observed that I was maybe getting a little bit too close to the breakdowns to allow myself to have consistent full field vision. This is a habit that I have been trying to eliminate so it is good to know I had somewhat gone back to old bad habits.
Also, I think I need to make myself a mental pregame checklist. When I referee from week to week I typically clearly remember what to work on and watch for, but when I have weekend breaks between games I sometimes forget and in my pregame warmups I forget what I really want to watch for and improve in my game. Recommendations?
Game 2: NYPD vs. Fort Bragg
By this time of the day (4 PM) the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. I tried applying some of the tips from earlier in the day and recall it making me feel more comfortable…it even made me catch a couple sly punches. I was very proud of the way I handled this punch up as I had struggled managing them earlier this spring (see old reports). As soon as I saw the prop tussle begin I blew a very loud long whistle, called the two players over and sent them both off to cool off for 5 minutes for “police brutality.” Both teams replaced their front rowers and sent off different players from the pitch to maintain contested scrums.
I should also comment that the scrums were quite…marginal…this game. The Bragg boys were murdering the police scrum even to the extent that I told the Bragg boys to back off in the scrum so we could get some flow to the game. At the start of the game I had a hard time believing how much the NYPD scrum was buckling even to the extent of penalizing and free kicking Bragg for foot up and boring. They may have indeed been doing this, but the problem only went away when I finally took the captain aside and told them to back off.
This game had similar score lines and events to the first (FDNY, Bragg) with the NYPD coming within 3 points of Bragg in the 2nd half only for Bragg to run away late in the show.
During this game I had a first, my Adidas boots of about two years finally gave out. I recall my feet landing feeling particularly soft and slippery for a reason I could not figure out during the game…only did I realize afterwards that my entire left foot was basically sliding out on the turf!
For the last game of the day Bragg played Lejeune, Lejeune came out the winners and therefore Liberty Cup 2009 champions. They had really taken it to all the opposition on the day and were clearly the fittest and most well rounded side. Bragg may have had a few more skillful players, but Lejuene certainly won with the fitness and organization game.
From here I was invited to the NY All Star sevens referee dinner at Connoly’s pub in manhattan. It was great to meet, eat, and drink with our country’s top sevens referees and assessors.
Since my boots had split in such spectacular fashion the day before I made no attempt to AR on Sunday despite being asked – instead going for a delightful English breakfast in Greenwich village
From there I hopped on the subway and went across the footbridge to Randall’s island to watch the rest of the sevens rugby. West won the Men and Northeast won the women’s division with some very entertaining games. Following the tournament I had the opportunity to meet and drink with a number of USA rugby celebrities including Dan Payne and Al Caravelli on our way to BBR…the tournament bar. I stayed for one drink, bullshitted a little, and caught the train to grand central and back up the Hudson river home. What a great weekend. 
1 comment:
Hey man, Just wanted to drop you a line and say that li liked your blog. As another rugger in the blogging community I wanted to ask you a couple questions. If you get a moment, shoot me an email. kswalls@ncsu.edu
Red
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