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SPORTS

The Norwich Guidon
April 8, 2004

NU rugby team travels to Ireland over spring break

By Stephanie Tavss
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

They had to sell a lot of raffle tickets and drink cozies to achieve their goal. The destination: a country that is home to Trinity College, the oldest continuous rugby club in the world.

“The Ireland tour was to help us get a better understanding of rugby,” said Sean Burgess, 19, a sophomore criminal justice major from Winthrop, Ma.

The Norwich University Men’s Rugby Team had the rare opportunity to travel to Ireland over spring break for an international tour.

“We had three matches that we played: one in Limerick, one in Dublin, and one in Galway,” Burgess said.

While in Dublin, the team played Trinity College, and in Limerick they played the Limerick Institute of Technology. In Galway, they played the Monavei Men’s Club.

“It was very exciting, a lot of fun,” said David Meaney, 19 a freshman sports medicine major from Medfield, Ma. “We got our butts kicked by the Irish.”

“But it was a learning experience,” Burgess added. “We didn’t go there to win. If we went to Ireland and won all three games, there wouldn’t have been a point.”

“Irish culture is a real rugby culture; they’ve been playing since they were, like, six years old, so they know the game real well, especially from a technical standpoint,” said Ryan Scott, 22, captain of the men’s rugby team and a senior business management major from Mill Valley, Ca. “So getting them [Norwich rugby players] to play against people who really have the game ingrained in them, just made them better players.”

“It gave us a different perspective on rugby, because the Irish play a very different game than we do,” Meaney said. “They play a lot faster game; they run on diagonals; they don’t run straight at you, which we commonly do. They play a lot more in the backs and use the forwards as support.”

“We brought kind of a Motley Crew; not all of the starters were able to make the trip, so a lot of guys got a lot of valuable experience against a lot better opponents,” Scott said.

“We also had four practices, three of them with international coaches,” Burgess said.

“The climax of our trip, I think everybody would agree, is, we met with George Hooke,” said Andy Grenier, 21, a senior accounting and management major from Westfield, Ma. “He’s, like, the John Madden of Ireland,” Burgess added. “He announces some of the professional games that go on, and we learned a lot from him.”

According to Scott, the players just hoped that some of what Hooke knew about the sport would rub off on them. Hooke’s book, “Hooked on Rugby” is used to help teams learn game development skills, Grenier said.

“This tour was really rugby-intensive. We either had a match every day or a training session every day,” Scott said. “When we weren’t at those places, we were either preparing or traveling to them. It wasn’t as much sightseeing time as I think a lot of the guys would have liked.”

However, the team did get the opportunity to experience some of the sights of Ireland.

“We went to go see the Cliffs of Moore, and we saw the Guinness brewery,” Burgess said.

“We got to see a lot of the countryside,” Meaney added.

According to Burgess, the price for the tour was $1200 per person.

“Coach came up with some fundraising ideas, and if you did them, you got money added to your account,” Burgess said.

“They set up sort of work-studies for us,” Meaney said. “We worked at the hockey games, basketball games, all the intramural sports we took care of. We also set up a broomball tournament on one of the weekends.”

The team members had to pay the remaining fees on their own, or with the help of outside scholarships.

“I feel, as a team, we are a lot closer, now. It brought us together,” Scott said. “There was a lot of team bonding,” Burgess said. “You get a group of guys, and you stick them on buses for hours at a time, there’s always stories from the night before; you laugh about it, have a good time.”

“It was a really good tour, and I think a lot of people are going to benefit in a few years to come,” Scott said. “All those kids that are freshmen this year are going to take what they learned and use it over the next few years, and it's really going to help the program.”

“We went on tour to form team unity and get some learning experiences in Ireland, to better ourselves for the Sweet 16 tournament, and that’s exactly what we did; that’s exactly what we accomplished,” Burgess said.

The Sweet 16 Rugby tournament will be held on April 17. Norwich is seeded 4.

The Norwich Guidon is a twice-monthly student newspaper distributed at Norwich University. It provides laboratory experience for students in the Communications program. Claims asserted by letter writers, editorials and other articles do not represent the positions of Norwich University. The Norwich Guidon welcomes signed letters to the editor. They should be no longer than 300 words. Unsigned letters will not be printed, but names may be withheld upon worthy request. All letters are subject to editing for length and good taste. Mailing address: The Norwich Guidon, Communications Center, Norwich University, Northfield, VT 056632. www.norwich.edu/guidon. If you have any questions or comments about the paper, please contact Professor Ken Bush at kbush@norwich.edu.