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

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

Eric’s Birthday Celebration in Melbourne!

Eric’s Birthday

Last Friday night Matt, myself and one of our teammates Sean Roche headed into the city to meet up with friends of ours from UConn and Stonington, named Ashely Wheeler and Eric Le Clair. They grew up with my younger sister Megan so I’ve known them for a long time. They happened to be on break from studying in Sydney, but were staying in Melbourne for a few days.

Eric’s 20th birthday was happening at midnight so we decided to make this an epic night out. Knowing this Matt and I booked a hostel right in the city so we didn’t have to worry about getting back to Mount Eliza at 4 o’clock in the morning.

During the planning of Eric’s birthday shenanigans we decided we were going go to this place called the Chill Out Ice lounge in Melbourne. This is a bar completely made of ice that you have to book in advance to make sure you can get in. So we all book ourselves in and for the price of $30 you get entry, a drink and all the proper attire to wear in the -10 degree Celsius bar (works out to about 14 degrees Fahrenheit). However, this wasn’t until 10:30 because we wanted plenty of time to pregame before hand.

After working all day drawing up special team slides and putting together depth charts for the football team, Matt and I left to pick up Sean in Narre Warren on the way towards the city so we could get to a reliable train station to get into the city through.

We took the train into Melbourne Central which is a massive mall right in the center of the CBD and ate dinner at KFC in the food court devouring a family platter between just Sean and myself. After dinner we went to find our hostel on Elizabeth St, which was only about 5 minutes away. While checking in we tried to convince the guy behind the counter that Sean wasn’t actually staying with us in the hostel (even though he had an overnight bag and pillow in tow). In retrospect, we should’ve left him outside for 10 minutes and had him come up after. We ended up just paying the extra 30 bucks for him to stay there and move on with our night changing in our room and heading out for Eric and Ashley’s hostel, which was called the Space Hotel. It actually looked futuristic and was much newer and cleaner than our current hostel, unfortunately they only take 2 plus night reservations.

Ashley and Eric met us downstairs so we could put our two cheap boxes of wine in a backpack to bring upstairs because many hostels technically don’t allow drinking in them. Then we followed them upstairs to their room and started having a few drinks befor the bar from our boxes of wine and their shots of cheap Australian Vodka. After about 45 of drinking we had killed 1 box of wine and a good portion of the bottle of Vodka and headed out for the Ice lounge which was about a 20 min walk from the space Hostel.

Upon arriving at the Ice lounge we check in and started getting geared up for our entrance into the bar. They provided us with two layers of gloves, a jacket with a hood and UGG boots if girls wore open toed shoes. They also gave us a timer to put in the jacket of our “team leader” which was Sean because he was the only Australian in the group and he’s also a Quarterback for our second division team so he was our leader haha. This timer was supposed to go off after 30 minutes in the Ice lounge for you to get out.

So we all go in and were at first surprised at how small it was because it was maybe only 500 square feet. But they don’t let too many people in it at a time so it wasn’t too bad, there was plenty of time where we were the only ones in there. I must say I did beat Sean and Matt in Ice “air” hockey where everything including the paddles, table, and puck were made of ice. Then we decided to grab our drink and while looking through the menu Matt finds the drink called ” The Drunk Idiot” which of course we all had to have. It was more or less the equivalent of a Jagerbomb and came in a glass completely made of ice (noticing a theme?).

They also had a rule of no outside cameras or pictures taken outside of their booths set up inside the lounge. This rule was broken early and often by all 5 of us! We were taking pictures of everything and everyone at first trying to be discreet and after a while flat out in the open and with flashes, whether that confidence was from not being caught or the alcohol is debatable haha. We also probably took about 30 pictures in their booths as well making all sorts of stupid faces, poses and the like. We decided on buying two of them and I think they ended up with Ashley and Eric ultimately.

Our timer never went off so we spent almost an hour in the Ice lounge and decided that was enough goofing around taking pictures, sliding around, and etc. and we were gonna head back to the Space Hostel to drink some more before we head out to our next club. On the walk back we all broke out into rapping some Eminem Lose Yourself which was highly entertaining to us and I’m sure the people around us as well.

When we got back to the Space Hotel we went up to Ashley and Eric’s room and found most of the people in their dorm asleep so we decided to have a drink in the staircase before we headed to the bar called the Carlton where one of our teammates was working as a bouncer  at the front door.

We walked to the Carlton which was only about 5 minutes from the Space Hotel. When we got there we said hello to Johnny and he let us go right in. I took Ashley and Eric straight to the top floor (there’s 4) and buy Eric a beer for his birthday because it was the 6th by this point. This level of the bar was awesome because its on the rooftop that had great views of the city all around you. There were palm trees and heaters everywhere if the wind gets a bit chilly early in the morning. We all made toasts to Eric for his birthday, the first of which was made by Sean who met him 5 hours earlier haha. I then decided to call Andrew Comeau to brag that I was on a rooftop bar and this was where things get a bit fuzzy for me ( I made the mistake of being the one holding the box of wine at all times pouring for everyone so anytime I poured one I  had one too). I was on the phone very briefly with Andrew and hung up mid conversation because Sean introduced me to a gorgeous girl named Rachel who I talked to for over and hour and somehow managed not to get her number or anything.

After the Carlton we stopped at McDonalds, or Macca’s for those who are Australian inclined, for some late night food and then decided to try to walk back to our hotel but the GPS was not working well (which was really annoying me because I wanted to go to bed; it was 3:30am), and we met back up with Ashley because her and Eric had decided to go to their hotel and go to bed but once she got back she decided she wanted to come back out. However Ashley forgot her keys back into the hotel and had to come back and stay in ours with us.

By the time we got back to the Elizabeth Hostel it was about 4:30 in the morning and we had a double room with 4 people in it. So Matt and Sean took the beds (Sean had a dislocated shoulder because of football practice) and Ashley and I threw a bunch of extra blankets on the floor and fell asleep

All in all I think we had an awesome night in the city! Definitely a crazy one between the ice lounge and the Carlton! Happy Birthday Eric we hope you enjoyed your stay in Melbourne! Thanks again Johnny for letting us into the club and Sean for being our guide!

Also check out Eric’s blog:  http://www.aroundtheworld168.blogspot.com.au/

And Ashley’s blog:  http://aussieash.wordpress.com/

Thanks again for reading!

Ben