Game Versus Bendigo 72-8

Hey Everybody,

This past weekend we had a game up in Bendigo which if you read our previous post about our night out after the game is an old mining town from the Gold rush here in Australia. Although it isn’t so much a town as it is a city now, in fact the biggest rural city in Victoria. Because Bendigo is 2 hours northwest from Melbourne and we live In Mount Eliza an hour southwest of Melbourne our teammate Marty invited Matt and myself to stay at his house in Wallan, which is only about an hour from Bendigo, for the night beforehand. This turned out great because we got to hang out with him and Andy who was also staying up there at his beautiful home, play madden, eat pasta and have a beer or two. It was a great night of just relaxing before our games the next day. It was also very convenient that Andy is a pastry chef and works at a bake shop called Glicks in Balaclava, so he brought up about 2 dozen bagels for us to chow down on in the morning (and some as a late night snack as well).

In the morning we woke up, went into the kitchen and looked out the window and saw kangaroos grazing in the yard, which was a cool experience seeing as we had yet to see kangaroos anywhere near a house until now, so naturally Andy Matt and I went outside to check them out for a bit because living near the city you won’t ever see them. After eating several bagels each we got ready for about an hours trek to Bendigo. When we were about halfway to Bendigo we stopped at a famous Bakery called Gaffney’s Bakerys in Heathcote where we stopped for their well renowned Meat pies. I personally chose a pepper steak meat pie which was fantastic. The meat inside was tender and the gravy was savory, which when topped with some Ketchup you cant beat it for a pregame meal.

After our brief stop at Gaffney’s it was on to Bendigo and time to check into our hostel for the night. We arrived at Bendigo back packers at around 2 o’clock and picked our room (the team rented out the whole place for the night). Once we got settled we took off for Tom Flood Sports Centre to help out the Barbs on their sideline starting at 4. They were playing the gladiators who we played last week, and is the same team the Barbs tied in their first meeting. The game was low scoring and pretty tough to watch, our boys the barbarians didn’t play a particularly good game and after almost every good play there was a penalty or missed assignment etc. That being said the defense generally played pretty well, pitching a shut out for game led by Taylor Berrington, Callum and Tas. The game stayed scoreless into the 4th quarter and right down till there was only a minute or so left and the Barbs faced a 4th and long from about the 35 yard line and decided to go for it rather than play for the tie and punt (there is no overtime in GV during regular season games). This proved to be the game changing call, where Ralph called a screen play left which was executed brilliantly with James Pho catching the ball and all of the lineman running down field making several blocks, some of the best by Andy Sher. This play got the barbs down to about the 4 yard line and after two QB sneaks they were in for the score with about 50 seconds left in the game. This proved to be winning score as the barbs go on to avenge their Tie from a few weeks before with an 8-0 victory in the waning minutes of the game.

It was about 6pm when the barbs game was finished and Matt and I hadn’t changed yet, which was a problem because our game was supposed to start at 7pm. So we ran back to the car and changed right in the middle of the parking lot and ran back down to the field to start warmups.

This was another game where we had quite a lot of concern going in because we were missing a bunch of guys. Particularly on the Offensive Line, We only had 2 of our normal starters, Myself and Phil our left guard. Our Left tackle Wayne is away on holiday, Our center Johnny Tostevin had to work because he was taking all of the next week off for the National Football team and my right guard Witold is still in Hospital after being in a terrible car accident last week with one of our Barbs Andrew Boxer. On a side note Andrew is already out of Hospital and home doing much better and Witold could possibly be back home in a day or two. I would like to give credit to those guys who filled in on the offensive line this weekend Tim, Kieren, Matty Curtis and Brandon you all did a great job and helped us get a win. It was also great to have our QB back this week from holiday.

Our game started off well, throwing and running down field in balance getting up 4 quick touchdowns and a 30-0 lead. One on a sneak by Dom, a touchdown to our new receiver Riku from Finland and touchdown to Dan Weaver who has returned after being away for a couple of games. Considering we were missing several key players on the line we started off well. We were in pretty good rhythm trying out lots of new plays to work out the kinks, and we generally had our way with the defense which was promising to me going forward knowing we can plug some guys in and be successful. Our defense during the first quarter played great stopping the Dragons everywhere, including a pick by Ben stokes, and great play by Ben Clark, Matt , Kieren Marini and Rhyss Keane.

However early in the second quarter the dragons QB scrambled around avoiding sacks and found a receiver who got lost in coverage and he took it down to the 3 yard line and after 3 great stops by the defense they ran an option play for a touchdown and a successful two point scramble left the score at 30-8. However the offense came back out and got two more scores on the board before halftime another one to RIku and a long run by our mainstay at RB Whitey and a 44-8 lead at the half. However the score did not indicate the fight with which the dragons were playing, they fought us every step of the way and have a bright future as a club as they get better.

 

In the second half our defense did a great job getting stops the whole time even while rotating in lots of backups and trying out some new things against an offense we didn’t know a whole lot about going into the game. This includes a pick by our FS Richo who ends up pitching it to another DB Doug who ended up returning it for a TD that was unfortunately called back for a holding penalty. Then in the 4th quarter Ben stokes returned a punt for a TD that I came inches away from blocking and another corner of our Ritchie Truong returned an interception for a touchdown with about a minute left in the game.

Offensively in the second half Whitey had another long run, his time down to about the 20 where we then threw a touchdown to Cory Porter. Not to mention a huge 75 yard throw and catch to our receiver Prince coleman who jetted right past his corner off the ball. In the end we won with a score of 72-8, but I have to give credit to the dragons for never giving up. We ended up with 480 yards of total offense on the day throwing for 270 and rushing for 210 and gave up 185 yards on defense so it was a solid day all around particularly with so many backups and changes involved.

 

Thanks everyone for reading, The warriors have a bye this week so I will only be reporting on the Buccs vs Barbs game on Saturday!

Ben

Port Arthur

On our 4^th Day in Tasmania we had a lot of options of things to do from Hobart but in the end we decided to take a day trip to Port Arthur. Port Arthur is a Historic Prison Site from the 1800’s when the United Kingdom used Australia and Tasmania (then known as Van Diemens Land) as prisons. People considered being shipped off to Australia for their crimes as worse than any punishment other than execution because 99% of prisoners who went never saw the UK again. Now there was also a hierarchy of prisons after being sent from the UK to Australia. Mainland Australia was generally for lesser crimes like burglary and theft, whereas prisons in Tasmania typically were for repeat offenders, rapists and murderers.  Now Port Arthur In particular was for the very worst of the worst, the criminally insane the serial rapists, things of that nature.

The reasons Port Arthur became a maximum security prison is because escape was almost impossible, They arrived in the belly of a ship that came all the way from the U.K so they had no direction they had come from. In order to get to the next closest city In Tasmania (Hobart) they would have to swim 80 nautical miles up through the southern Ocean which is known as having some of the roughest seas in the world. The only section of land that connects to the rest of Tasmania is Eagle Hawk Neck which is a strip of Land that at its thinnest is only 60 meters across and at this point the prison had a guard tower with 15 guards and 15 hungry dogs which they called the dog line and was guarded 24 hours a day which would be virtually impossible to cross without being seen.

There is actually a story of a guy who had escaped from the prison and found a dead wallaby on his way towards eagle neck point. After finding this he figured it would be a great disguise to fool the guards. So he skinned it and draped it over his shoulders and did his best wallaby impression as the sun was going down to cross the dog line. However the guards saw him and thought he was a wallaby. However instead of ignoring him and letting him hop on through they fired at him thinking they would have themselves a fresh dinner of wallaby after eating dried meat for weeks at this outpost. As soon as they fired the prisoner through off the wallaby skin, put his hands in the air said I’m not a real wallaby please don’t shoot! However unfortunately for the prisoner he was struck on the arm and he was brought back to the prison hospital and as you can imagine in the 1800’s all they could do was amputate. At the time it turned out they didn’t have any rum anything else to dull the pain so he was awake for the whole procedure. He ended up surviving the amputation and became a regular prisoner again. Now Port Arthur was a hard labor prison, all prisoners had to either work in the coal mines or in the woods logging. They forced this same prisoner to go back to work logging in the chain gangs to serve as a deterrent for any other prisoners to try to and escape.

Matt and I spent the entire day looking over the grounds of Port Arthur which had several houses on the grounds because all of the guards, doctors, and administrators had to live on the grounds outside of the prison. We were able to go inside over 30 different building of the time ranging from the 2 separate prisons, the doctors houses and many others seeing lots of artifacts from the day. We also got to go on a cruise of the harbor which is absolutely gorgeous and protected from the rough currents of the southern Ocean.

It turned into a great educational day for us learning about some of the history that started Australia and in particular Tasmania. It was a beautiful ground with a ton to see and we really enjoyed our experience.

Once we left Port Arthur we went back to our hostel in Hobart and decided we wanted to go out to dinner so we drove around Hobart for a while and found a place called Salamanca Market which is well known for its variety of shops and restaurants. After walking up and down the street for a bit we found a place we wanted to eat called Barcelona and had an awesome dinner with some very large beers as well!

Thanks for reading!

Matt and Ben

The One Month Mark!

Hey everybody!

First of all thank you all for following us and your continued support of our blog and Australian endeavors! Today marks one full month of being in this wonderful country. It seems like it has been a shorter and longer period of time all at once, which I guess may mean it feels just about right. We have been able to do so many different things, many of which I had never done before coming to Australia. Let me recap our first month for you all in case you missed anything!

Matt and I arrived here on March 15th and met our host Ralph at the airport, drove us to Mount Eliza where he lives and got us all settled in his house where we have been staying ever since. Him and his wife Tina have been incredible to us, feeding us amazing home-cooked meals, letting us use their extra car, introducing us to new people that have had us over for barbeques, taken us out rock climbing, bowling, as well as countless others things.

We have started playing and coaching football again, which I think I can speak for both Matt and myself by saying that playing football was our first true passion in life, and we are back playing once again. I haven’t had this much fun and excitement playing football in several years and I have been reminded how much I truly love this game. Our teammates and fellow coaches have been awesome, everyone has been willing and able to learn from us and they are all great guys. I am at the point where I feel like I’ve known most of my teammates for years, but in reality its been a month or less. Not to mention we have tons of talent on our roster and other teams in our league better be on point or I promise they will get steamrolled.

We have been able to see a lot of the Greater Melbourne area, including the Mornington Peninsula where we live, all the way down to the beach towns of Sorrento and Portsea near the Bass Strait. up towards the city through St. Kilda, Frankston, Clayton and many others. We’ve been able to explore some of the city going through Federation Square, Flinders St., some of the bar scene up there including the Carlton where one of our teammate’s works the door, and the Chill On Ice lounge (also highly recommended). We’ve been to a Rugby league game at the AAMI Park, walked through Rod Laver Arena and surrounding courts, and have seen the great MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds) from the outside (attending a game there in a month). We’ve stayed in a couple different hostels in the city and wandered through Chinatown as well.

We’ve already been on a 5 day road trip where we drove from Melbourne to the Grampians where we climbed up several mountains and took some of the craziest pictures I’ve ever seen (check out our facebooks). Then drove through South Australia to get to Adelaide where we saw our first Koala just above our tent in a tree. After a night out in Adelaide we drove down to Cape Jervis and caught the SeaLink ferry to Kangaroo Island where we saw kangaroos everywhere as well as an emu, a Eucalyptus distillery, Admirals Arch, The Remarkable Rocks, and many other scenic attractions . After that we somehow got to a camping ground after 10pm in Victor Harbor (if want to read that story check out our Kangaroo Island Post here: https://touchdowndownunder.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/kangaroo-island-2/ ). After Kangaroo Island we drove down to Robe and Warrnambool for a day each for some drinking and beach going. Then we finished our trip with a full day adventure down the Great Ocean Road which was absolutely amazing!

We’ve also been able to try as much of the local food and drink as we can get our hands on, we have become particularly partial to the meat pies they make here in the cafe’s, which by my count outnumber the people that live here. We also have tried the notorious Vegemite, which when done properly is actually quite good. The beer here so far has been alright with our favorite being Fat Yak, but we haven’t seemed to find quite as many of the micro brew beers that I’ve heard so much about. Maybe were looking in the wrong places.

We also should be starting work soon because so far all we’ve done is spend and have a great time (not that I’m complaining, but pretty soon we’ll need to fund the fun lol). We have several possibilities to start working which should be figured out by the end of this week. We have gotten a house to move into for the last several months of our trip in Mount Eliza that we are house sitting for a teammate’s mother while she is overseas. This will enable us to live like Australians for much less than if we had to rent somewhere and buy all of our own furniture etc.

All in all our trip has been full of fun and surprises everywhere, we’ve had a wonderful first month and we are looking forward to the next 5 being better than the first one! Coming up soon is hopefully a trip to Tasmania, our first scrimmage, the start of the season and many other adventures! Thanks again for reading and helping us reach over 3400 views!! We hope you all enjoy it and if you have any suggestions please let us know!!

Ben and Matt