All Hail the Victors! Because Christchurch won it, and we lost it; fair and square. But hey, let's be honest, we didn't give it away, we fought the good fight with all our might, but they fought better. Luckily, we get another crack at them for the Trophy later on in the season.

Sam asked me after the game what it looked like from the sideline, and I told him it looked awful. In places. But upon reflection, I may have been somewhat harsh. The forwards certainly lost their set game plan from the kickoff (literally) allowing Christchurch to score within 30 seconds of the whistle blowing. That's never a good start, and sometimes such a shock to the system helps rev things up. Alas, revs never got above my Grandmother's record of 1733rpm in her old Austin A30. Yes, some forwards as we expect, played to the standard we've come to expect such as Sammy, Kev etc. Others also played to the standard we expect and therefore need to work on improving. Which is what I'd say if I was Trouty.

Backs didn't progress much better than the forwards, except as a response to what Christchurch did. Never an independent attack of our own. Vinny, who was MVP, played well, but made some handling errors, Dick seemed not quiet as involved as usual, possibly due to hardly ever getting the ball, Bravo kept on getting shot down before he could make any moves and Muzz seemed to be the only one to progress forward from his position in the backs.

I would very much not take this all the wrong way if I were you, gentle reader, as the boys were bitch slapped from the first seconds of the game and were in a state of shock and dare I say it, panic from then on. Individual players stepped up and tried to rally the team, but I think as a collective, we just went "Woah! What the fuck just happened" and couldn't get out of the mindset.

However, there is a new game next week against the Bus Drivers and a new result to write about. Don't let a simple stumble define our whole season to come as we still have 12 more games to go.