On tap for today was a match against Colorado Springs followed by the inaugeral.. er… 1st annual Flamingo Migration Bar Crawl. The match due to some scheduling conflicts was held at Boltz Jr. High instead of the Greenbriar Park.
The pitch lined by the city very nicely, but we had to set up temporary posts. The post on the north side was adorned with a full size American Flag, very nice touch. I could get used to playing here despite the complete ban on alcohol. As Fort Collins is notorious for doing, Colorado Springs traveled with a light side, I think 16 or 17 players. To start the match a moment of silence was held for those who had fallen on 9/11. An emotional start to a match the Flamingos desperately desired to win.
From the start, Fort Collins dominated the game with several tries scored before the half. Unfortunately, because of the excellent bar crawl later that evening (which I will also talk about), I no longer remember enough of the point by point plays to recount every try here. The final score had the Flamingos ahead with a dominating 42-14 giving us our first league win of the season (1-3 in league matches). I have to tip my hat to the Grizzlies though, as they did not let up despite the score. The last play of the match was a linout to the Flamingos about 10 meters from the tryline. A 3 man lineout was called with Cary Dickens as first lifter and me winding up as second lifter. The movement was a faked “scrumhalf” insert with the ball popped to the first lifter. It worked great with the defensive lifter opposite Cary commiting to a lift, leaving only a hooker between Cary and a try. Well that little guy wasn’t going to stop Cary as he drove himself and the hooker in goal and scored his first try for the club. Cary still owes the zulu, and due to a prior side-bet between him and I, I now get to treat him to dinner.
Chad Parker received man of the match for his outstanding work on the day, including two tries. A thanks also goes out to Greg Chvatal for recognizing our weaknesses and designing training excercises the last 2 weeks to work toward fixing those problems. Even though the training was tough, and we had a number of injuries, the work we did showed up on the pitch this day.
For the B-side match several Fort Collins players joined with the Grizzlies. I’m not sure what the final score was but I am sure the Flamingos won by “alot”. The Flamingos had two consecutive kick-off returns directly go in for tries. Mike “Winger-Hair” Duncan also scored his first try and still owes his zulu. The game was called 10 minutes early when Gabe Iltis went down with a neck injury. An ambulance was called and he was taken to the hospital. After x-rays and cat scans it was determined that it was not a serious injury, and he was released (after a shot of morpheine) in time to make it to the bar crawl! He will not be able to play for several weeks however. Joe Dauner was awarded man of the match for the B game.
First Annual Flamingo Migration Bar Crawl
Almost before the after-match party started at CB Potts the 80 bar crawl shirts were sold. I believe the printers were able to get a few more to us, so I think the total number of shirts was around 100. I know I personally had to turn away 4 non-rugby friends for lack of shirts. But the shirts themselves are awesome. Full color designs with the bars on the crawl printed on a large rugby ball on the back. I felt bad about having the bars get marked off.
Thanks go to Terje Whitmore and Word Sauer for pulling this off. While there were minor setbacks with some establishements not letting their staff know that we were coming, and others not honoring their prior promises, all the problems were eventually ironed out by the work of Word and Terje. I don’t know how many of the original 100 actually completed the crawl, but I do know that when the small group I was with was finally able to talk the door guy into letting us into Tailgate Tommys (The place was closing and it was last call and they were not letting anyone in), there were only about 15 of us there. Five of those were Grizzlies and the rest Flamingos. Good times, and I’m sure we will be able to work out the kinks for the 2nd annual Flamingo Migration!
I know a number of pictures were taken during the Migration. Whoever has them (Jim, Jeff, and ?), please email (or bring a disk) to me a few good ones for the website.