Tour Journal: The Rowers Tour To Remember Takes on The Foxes in Bedlinog

Once upon a time God made a rugby pitch. He put it in a lush green valley among rolling hills and quaint stone houses along a winding road. There were green trees on each sideline and the practice pitch was made of the same soft ground and green grass as the playing pitch. The sheds were big enough for both teams, and there was a set of monkey bars for the kids. The posts and the lines were straight. He called it “Bedlinog” and he put it in Wales.

The on-field part of the Tour to Remember wrapped up against the Bedlinog Foxes. The Rowers kicked off in the first half, running downhill on a sloped pitch. The Welsh team was well organized, preferring to work up the middle and make use of a strong pack. They picked from the base and controlled the game well, communicating in a unique and unintelligible chatter that I was later told was in-fact English. The Foxes got on the board first, scoring a well-earned try and slotting the conversion. Germany-based Rowing Club tour fixture Mark Lovell was then able to put one in for the Rowing club, the conversion chance went begging, leaving the score at 7-5 Bedlinog.

The hosts answered quickly, playing a level of rugby yet unseen on the VRC tour. Bedlinog kicked for position, won lineouts and generally took the approach that one would expect out of craftsmen who took their trade seriously. The home crowd cheered as the conversion capping another forward try split the sticks, making it 14-5 Bedlinog.

The Rowers responded after a few inside phases by getting the ball wide to a seemingly unstoppable Maverick Seed streaking along the wing to create a 2 on 1 with Nik Samija. Maverick, having his third stormer of a game, worked a textbook give and go with Samija, committing the defender and making a feed into space for Nik to finish all alone.

Touring rugby sides don’t do much kicking. The Rowers Euro side did not carry anyone professing to be a kicker, and I’ll spare those who filled in when necessary the embarrassment of naming them. The Rowers didn’t kick for position, the Rowers didn’t kick for points and when it came time to kick conversions, we were nearly hopeless. However, on this lone occasion, Nik having put it in directly under the posts, somebody split the sticks. 14-12 for Bedlinog at half time.

Disco Stu Doesn't Advertise

In the halftime huddle, coach Mergui pointed out that the only thing working was getting it outside, and that we ought to do more of that. So we did. The Rowers received the 2^nd half kick and immediately played it out to our talented backs, who made good yards. “Disco” Stu Holland carried an excellent first half into a dazzling second half, as he worked his trademark dance move / show and go successfully to create chances and breaks for the visitors. Playing with a nasty goose egg under his right eye left over from the Ironsides game, Stu put together a memorable run up the middle through space that must have left three or four defenders reaching at nothing or nursing broken ankles.

The customary pregame talk with the referee had been the standard discussion, delivered by a kindly old Welsh man who had volunteered to help out for this friendly. The captains had implored us to take it easy on this nice man and limit the backchat. The grumbling was kept to a minimum as Bedlinog’s slowing of production went un penalized. But when South African standout winger Dave Andersen burned two men on sheer speed, then fought through a tackle and put the ball down in the corner only to have it called a knock-on, all pretense of civility left the Rowers’ sideline in an eruption. Samija couldn’t speak clearly for the rest of the tour after that.

Andersen fights off a tackle

An off center penalty to Bedlinog in the visiting 22 gave them a chance to showcase their flawless kicking game, slotting a beauty that was solidly booed from the Rowers sidelines, making it 17-14 for the hosts. Undaunted, the Rowers battled for a good 15 minutes, holding on to the ball and building simple phases until a marauding Brett Illing picked and went from the base to punch one in and give the Rowers a 19-17 lead.

But on that night in the Welsh valleys, under stadium lighting and in front of the dogs and children of a town of 2,000 who care about rugby in the same way as the Rowing Club faithful who gather at Brockton in February downpours do, fortune was not on the Rowers side. Bedlinog put in a final try to go up 24-19 after kicking a flawless conversion.

A Dapper Markus SK Observes With the Rowers Bench

Up the hill at the clubhouse, we watched the Fiji-England world cup game together and ate sausages with chips and gravy. After losing the standard man-of-the-match boat race by only a few ounces, we were given another chance with our choice of contenders and still lost. We learned new drinking games and spotted a shirt on the wall from a BC club who had visited long ago. We lingered as long as we could, and traded shirts and stories. The clubhouse party was still hopping when we left.

As we ate our sausages, I eavesdropped on Rowers scrumhalf Gerard Lynch discussing on field strategy with a teammate who had come along as a supporter. Asked why, when given a penalty inside the 22 with a three point deficit, he elected to go with a crash ball to the pack instead of kicking for points that would have tied it up.
“Honestly," Lynch answered, "it never even occurred to me.”

 

Rowers Touring Side v. Battersea Ironsides RFC: The Tour to Remember Remains Undefeated

Rowers Pregame Huddle at Battersea

It was a wet one

Rain fell over London in a steady, cold, grey downpour as the Rowing Club Euro Touring Side bussed to the borough of Battersea to take on the Ironsides in the second match of the great 2015 Tour to Remember. I had hoped as we rode there that the rain would let up a bit before kickoff, but it just got harder in rolling waves during the warmup, dialing back every now and then to a steady downpour.

The Ironsides playing pitch is about a kilometer from their clubhouse and warm-up pitch, so we walked there along cobbled English streets in full kit and boots, already soaked to the bone. The lines on the pitch had long been washed away by rain, and puddles had gathered atop several mud pits of unknown depths.

Not a lot of traction in this scrum

The Rowers came out strong, recovering a greasy loose ball and working through phases after receiving the opening kick. The Ironsides played hard defense, especially near their own goal line. They were able to absorb a few phases before Dave Hall fought off a two man tackle to open the scoring. The conversion missed and it was five to nil for the Rowing Club.

A few more wet phases after the re-start, winger Nik Samija got the ball in space for a long run up the outside. Tour Captain and noted minute hog Jamie Overgaard then carried it on a pick, drew the defender and set up veteran VRC front row forward Mark Smith for a try from about 5 yards out, running through defenders on the way. Ten to nil Rowing Club.

Parlato chats with the locals

The Ironsides turned it over again inside their own 22, and the VRC was able to get it to a hard charging Luc Gourdine, who proceeded to score the full-dive splashdown try of everyone’s dreams directly under the sticks. Godfather Stevie MacGillivray put the conversion in to make it seventeen to nil VRC.

Gourdine would later be sent off on a yellow in the 2^nd half for attempting to tackle a Battersea player on his way from the end goal to the 22m to kick a drop out. He presumably felt shame.

The Ironsides knocked on the VRC door with multiple goal line phases at the end of the half, but were unable to put one in before the end of the first 30 min half, and had to go into the half with nothing.

The Rowers kept up their excellent defense initially, defending hard inside their own 22, but were unable to capitalize on chances, including an impressive 40 yard gallop by Samija. Perhaps suddenly realizing that they were in danger of getting shut out on their home pitch by a Canadian touring side that has been drunk for a week the Ironsides turned it on, scoring a converted try to make it 17-7, following that up with an unconverted try to make it 17-12 and leave the Rowers sideline wondering what the hell happened.

Curry time!

The Rowers re-grouped and pounded hard picks from the base of the ruck right up to a goal line that had been thoroughly washed away (and that I swear I was over with the ball to the ground, but whatever), before turning it over and allowing the hosts to move the ball the length of the field to tie the game with another try.

Watching a 17 point lead evaporate in the final 15 minutes of a game took a bit of the air out of a previously pumped VRC team, but it all came back as the Ironsides conversion attempt clanged off the spot where the cross bar met the uprights, and the final whistle went, sealing a 17-17 draw.

Brass pump taps and their operator

Battersea are excellent hosts. They fed us curry and rice with pints of bitters pumped out of old brass taps by a man that looked as though he had been doing it since the Heath administration.  A member told me that the club was founded by a tank commander after the second world war, to keep Battersea youth from getting into mischief with nothing else to do. The club are very proud to have the largest youth program in Britain. An autographed England National shirt hangs on the wall from Kyle Sinckler, who credits his success to the early stewardship of the Ironsides youth program.

Once the kit dries out, we’ll put it all on again for another game in Wales ahead of a Canada - Ireland clash at the World Cup. Stay tuned as the Rowers Euro Tour rolls on, undefeated.

Rowers Euro Tour Visits Grave Sites of Fallen Players

Rowing Club Wreath at the Vimy Ridge Monument

The Great War, at least the physical part of it, was brutally simple. “Rolling Barrage” is an elegant way of saying “They blew everything up, sent men in to carve up anyone left over with bayonets, then set up and did it again. Do it right, and do it enough, and you’ve gained a square of bombed-out mud covered in bodies of people who, until recently, worked at jobs and wrote letters home and played rugby.

Restored Trenches at Vimy Ridge

Behind all of that messy simplicity, ran a complicated machine that managed the logistics. It leveraged enormous amounts of toil from the people back home to keep their recently departed and newly endangered men fed, clothed, and medicated to the point they stayed alive long enough to die usefully. The management layer, in turn, responded to a larger and more complicated political and financial machine that knew something about the why of it all. Reasons were probably abstract concepts to people who’s feet were rotting off. They were past the “why’s” at that point.

So the Rowers went to Vimy Ridge to learn about it. We saw underground tunnels where thousands of Canadian kids gathered in silence for 36 hours before being sent in across a smoking mud patch to be used as human weapons. We saw where messengers got thin sleep between high-speed trips back and forth from the front – white armbands keeping them from being shot as defectors as they ran back. The tour guide said a messenger’s average life span was five days.

Military Cemetery in France

The monument on the ridge is beautiful and very large. It has to be to fit all of those names. The team laid a wreath for Russell Kerfoot Johnston, a VRC member, and Cam Tompkins read the first of many biographies by grave sites. Johnston was a stockbroker who lived on Harwood Street in the West End. The 33-year-old came from Manitoba and worked in an office and played rugby.

The military cemeteries of Northern France and Belgium are neatly maintained. They dot the countryside among farms and very old brick buildings. White headstones of soldiers are marked: name, rank, crest of country, year born, year buried. Sometimes there’s an inscription. Sometimes there is no name or year of birth. The inscription on those ones read, “Known unto God.”

Steve Somers lays a poppy

In Ypres, the war memorial monument is at the town’s gateway, a grand archway over the main road. Like Vimy, it has to be big. We found the names of the guys who played for the club. They probably chased geese off Brockton and hated conditioning drills but went hard at them anyway. They probably looked forward to jars at the club on Thursday nights. They definitely left it all out there on Saturdays, because that’s the way it’s done, like they left it all out there in Ypres, too.

We laid the Ypres wreath at the war memorial as part of the nightly last post ceremony. Rowing Club players read the simple bios of players who didn’t get to come back, and didn’t get to be veterans, and didn’t get to be alumni. I took pencil rubbings of their names from the monument wall and went out to enjoy Ypres with my friends.

Rowers Win First Tour Game at Ovale du Gy in the North of France

The bus to the game was noisy or, at least, everything felt amplified. There were bleary eyes and sunglasses and abuse of exit valves. 

Ovale du Gy is at the end of a cobbled road out in the French Countryside, among stone buildings and working farms. It’s the sort of thing they put on postcards and the outside of wine boxes. They welcomed us off the bus with handshakes and warm smiles. The pitch looked frozen in time – a white fence on the far side separating it from a hay field. A thin mud stirred up from the morning rain sat atop a hard earth under green grass. The warmups felt like starting an old car that had been parked in a barn somewhere. Once it all got moving, everything still worked and it was ready for a few good miles.

Their coaches harp about the same things as the VRC coaches, just in French

The Silver Bisons are the over 40s division of the Ovale du Gy club. Their games are played on Sundays, so they’re able to borrow younger players from the main club to fill out the roster.

Captain Overgaard addressed my prior concern that our new vintage VRC long sleeve red and white hoops were too nice to be dragged through a muddy rugby game in the pre-kickoff huddle: “There are guys who came over here and fought a war with these jumpers in their bags. They’re not for keeping clean. Now let’s go get them muddied and bloodied.”

Old Boys Format in France calls for three 20 minute periods.  The Rowers received and came out strong right away. It played like an over 40s game. No kicking from outside the 22, no touchies, and a home-side referee who only used the whistle when it was absolutely necessary. Our quintet of VRC props offered no comment on the uncontested scrums. The Bisons made good use of the rolling maul

1910 VRC Replica Tour Shirt With French Mud

to make yards but were otherwise offensively frustrated in the first third. They rucked fearlessly, and treated the ball with a sense of ownership, but were unable to find paydirt. The Rowers established a rhythm quickly. They made good use of available space, finding winger Nik Samija on the outside to open up the scoring with a forty yard run. Luc Gourdine then made the most of a distinctly unfair age advantage, scoring his first of two tries on the day. Dave Hall, on loan to the Rowing club from his home in Spain, also scored one of his characteristic breakaway tries. I can’t remember if counterpart winger Dave Anderson scored one or not, but if not he probably set a few up. There are no conversions in old boys rugby, so the Rowers finished the first third up three tries to none.

The Bisons showed the visitors that they could run with them in the 2^nd third, putting in 2 tries of their own, one courtesy of George Richmond who turned it over near his own goal line, and one off a rolling maul. The Rowers scored two of their own in a period where they had the most ball. Highlights included a Justin Parlato try, Steve McGilvery pulling a crowd-pleasing Harlem Globetrotters impression, Mikey Santoro carving up a defense with a few stutter steps into space, and Jamie Overgard winning a foot race over 50 yards with a smile on his face to put one in.

The third stanza saw the Rowers scoring four tries to the hosts one, for a final score of nine tries to three. By then the red and white were playing with unstoppable grins. To a man, this was the most fun we’d had in a long time. The Bisons weren’t afraid of contact and liked to mix it up at the bottom of the rucks. The pain cut through a lingering numbness from the night before and made us remember where we were and what we were doing. Contact turns a surreal float through a rugby game in the French countryside into a clear and present situation. You can really taste the mud with someone lying on the back of your head, and it makes a guy feel alive.

The Ovale Du Gy Clubhouse

Ovale du Gy are top hosts. Their quaint clubhouse is decorated with the plaques, banners and trophies that line the walls of similar clubhouses everywhere. It takes a lot of baguettes, sausages and pates to feed 2 rugby teams, but there was plenty to go around. Beer was at the clubhouse bar for cheap, and wine on the table next to the baguettes - on the house. I got the feeling that serving the bread and cheese and pate without wine would have been considered rude. We were invited to a curious ‘cheese eating boat race’ featuring some cheese that with an odor that can’t be done justice in print. Maverick Seed, fresh off of an impressive try saving cover tackle, was unable to keep his hastily eaten fromage down. I’m not sure whether that means he won or lost.

We sang songs and visited with Coach Matty Jones’ parents who came in from England to support us, and talked with people who live lives just like ours, but live them in French. I’m not sure rugby as ever been quite that much fun.

Stay tuned for more tour coverage, including pictures.

A Quarter Never Came Back: The Vancouver Province Talks with VRC's Cam Tompkins about the Tour To Remember

Photo: Kelly Egilsson

As 42 Rowers pack their bags for a 10 day tour of France, Belgium, England and Wales, The Vancouver Province's Susan Lazaruk sat down with Cam Tompkins to talk about the Tour To Remember and what it means to him, and to the club.

The long list of names on a plaque on the wall at the club of his new rugby club immediately caught the eye of Cameron Tompkins.
The plaque listed rugby players from the Vancouver Rowing Club in Stanley Park who had turned soldiers to fight in the First World War a century ago, a quarter of whom never returned home.
“I was surprised at how big the honour roll was,” said Tompkins, 34. “You don’t usually see that many names from one place.”
It piqued his curiosity particularly because he’d spent a year as a tour guide in the historic battlefields in France near the Battle of Vimy Ridge, during which 3,598 Canadian troops were killed and 7,004 were wounded.
When Tompkins read the names of the players among those dead and wounded in the Great War — of the 164 who signed up to fight, 42 were killed in battle and 36 were wounded — he knew he would like to honour them somehow.
“They all volunteered to fight,” said Tompkins, a New Zealander who moved to Canada in 2005, married a Canadian and lives in Vancouver.

The Print edition has this great picture of the 1910 Rowing Club squad.

No word yet on whether or not Jeremy & Jon Mergui are going to adopt the 3 piece suit look.

The touring side has 3 games planned, in Paris, London and Wales, plus a trip to see Team Canada play against Ireland at the World Cup in Cardiff. Canada is a 37.5 point underdog at press time.

The Club will be visiting the graves of the Rowers from the 1910 team who didn't make it back for a wreath laying ceremony. Stay tuned to the Rowers Ruck Muck for in-tour updates and photos!