Jaeger actually called Pasta to see if we had a game on account he was the only one there when he showed. We did indeed have a game but the players rolled in slowly as the field was lined from the high school match. Sensing that coach was probably out looking for his dog and Aztec was looking for ... well anyway ... we decided to jog around the field in a semi-organized mass. Then, they showed up late so the whole thing was delayed. Odd start.

They were one short so we gave them Junior who had a heck of a game on the other side. They started fast and it was just the start of more to come from their No. 14 who broke tackles and scored between the posts. Then they proceeded to take all of our ball so it was a rough start.

But then we finally started to seal over the ball (with way too many forwards but at least we were preventing the poach) and Trey and backline crew had a few great plays. One was a fullback insert and Adam Karl broke it right up the middle ... only to almost be caught by No. 14! Another was a couple of up-and-unders recovered by us and hammered home. We were up 21-7 after about 10 minutes.

For the rest of the half it was pretty even. We had a lot of possession and we did a good job of protecting the ball. They did a good job of getting it to 14 -- one of their plays was a penalty play that was simply hands across the field to him ... and he scored! Lineouts were FUBAR on both sides. We didn't win ours, but they didn't win theirs cleanly either. And at this point, scrums were pretty even. Ghandi went down late in the first half with a concussion (he needs to stop playing for a few weeks) and we moved Bryan out to center where he played very aggressively, had some nice runs and almost a couple of picks. Halftime score: 38-26 in our favor.

The second half was a completely different story. We still did an OK job of sealing over the ball but the numbers we were using to do it took its toll. We'd win one phase only to lose it in the next phase. The forwards got tired. We had some different sets of players in there and we lacked some experience at times, lacked cohesiveness and lacked fitness. And they scored. Not always out to the backs but that's usually where it started. They'd swing it for a nice big gain and then they'd punch it in with turtles at the base of the ruck. In a not-so-ironic twist, they actually got better when their loud-mouth No. 1 got a yellow card. I think they scored twice with him in the bin. Huh.

They got ahead by about 10 points midway through the half and never looked back. Final score was 56-38. At the end, we were soundly defeated. They had us in scrum downs, breakdown play and open play. We had some bright moments, including a particularly good day by Bruce who denied them their lineout and even stole a couple of theirs. And he fought hard in the loose. But a fitting analogy for the day for us was when Bruce crashed it in off second phase on a penalty play, was in the in-goal trying to touch it down, and had it pulled from his hands by No. 14, who ran it the other way! That's how our day was. Fought hard with bright spots but in the end out-matched.

That's how I saw it.