Bournmouth Rugby 7s

Thursday, 1st July 2010

On the 29th – 30th May 2010, bank holiday weekend, Old Queenian’s RFC yet again put out a strong showing at one of the country’s best known Rugby Seven’s tournaments.

Having grown significantly since the inaugural event in 2008, the 2010 festival hosted the largest rugby and netball festival in the world with 156 rugby sevens teams, 96 netball teams and 16 touch rugby teams competing on the sunny south coast (apart from the Saturday which absolutely hammered down).  Luckily for us we weren’t playing till Sunday and there were copious amounts of weather protected local establishments onsite to keep us well fed and watered.

Live bands and DJs entertained the crowds all weekend in the Kopparberg Campsite, Nintendo Festival Stage and Carling Beer Tent.  Radio 1’s, DJ Spoony also made an appearance playing some excellent P.A.T.Y tunes (I haven’t miss – spelt ‘party’ there, ask someone who went to Bournemouth and they shall explain), with amongst others Old Q’s RFC adopted mascot David Guetta!

Other entertainment included a stunt parachute display, video diary room, Pitchside Jacuzzi, party bus, fancy dress, big screen TV and Rock-e-oke.

A host of celebrities and sports stars including England rugby internationals Austin Healey, Ugo Monye, Dan Hipkiss and Olympic gold medalist Jason Gardiner all enjoyed the weekend’s festivities in the exclusive V.VIP celebrity lounge.

After an initially high response from the Old Q’s contingent for the 14 spaces on the squad, unfortunately due to many of the younger lads being in their third year of university…..exams took priority.  I think they had their priorities wrong personally!  As a result a last minute squad was whipped together consisting of 12 lads.

Due to applying late in the day, the last full contact league (obviously there will still plenty of spaces in the touch tournament!) which had spaces for us to join was the ‘Shandy Cup’.  Whilst appropriate for Andrew Williams, we weren’t sure whether this would be full of no hopers, which would give us a chance!  Or the ‘keen’ players who would be drinking lemonade on the side line instead of our obligatory farm house cider.

However, it didn’t turn out to be an issue as I may have overdone our team summary and as a result we were promoted (we think) to the ‘Lager Cup’.

The majority of us arrived on the Friday as the camping was for the whole bank holiday. We set up camp and enjoyed the campsite’s live music which was excellent.  On the Saturday the remainder of the lads arrived and we spent the day watching the ‘professionals’ going about their business, with teams such as the British (Fijian) Army on display.

On the Sunday it was our turn.  Waking up fresh as a daisy after a very quiet Saturday night……!  We took to the field for our first game at 11am.  Within our group were certain teams with names so rude I could not possibly have those profanities contained within such a well-established newsletter!

As player manager I decided to take my roll seriously and play with a tie on, purely for image purposes obviously.  Needless to say this made me a bit of a target and I ended up with two broken ribs and a black eye!  Not the only one mind Alex Peacock cracked a few ribs, and as he is a Marine, played on of course.  So I had to follow suit!

We came out of the group well, and ended up going through to the middle tier competition.  We did well and won the game of the last 16 getting through to the quarter finals.  Unfortunately we lost, and that was to be the end of our match time for the weekend.  The chaps all played really well, and livid up to the Old Q’s attitude of play hard and party hard.

Once again can I say a big thankyou to the Old Queenian’s association for their support in entering the tournament, and we hope this relationship continues for many years to come!

Hope to see you all at the November reunion, when once again we shall put Wellington to the sword.  This time it will be all the sweeter on their home ground!

More photos of the event can be found on the 'Offical Photos' page in the Photo Gallery

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