I'm a FLANKER!!!!

I woke up this morning, and could barely move.

That's how you know Saturday was a good day.


When I woke up Satuday, the downpour of the day before had stopped. When we were on the field warming up, however, it started to really pour. We'd jogged around the pitch, charting puddles (two or three, only one of them particularly deep), but as the rain bucketed down the pitch turned into a near-river. My hair (newly cut and enpinkified on Thursday, with a little help from Germany) bled down my face and neck and onto my jacket - the "Pink" embroidered on my jacket is now actually pink.

By the time we started playing, the rain had stopped, but the field was a swamp. We were SOAKED, and covered in mud. I'm not just talking mudstains - you could've planted a garden in my shorts. It was pretty cold and wet and miserable. It worked out, though, because you got numb and didn't feel how much you were getting knocked around.

But, moving on to the actual playing. As I alluded to in previous entries, I was playing FLANKER - a forward position, considerably different from the back positions (wing, sometimes full back) I've played before. Instead of staying out of every ruck I could, I was supposed to be in every other ruck (and was usually in more); instead of standing around in the middle of the field during scrums and lineouts, I was IN scrums and lineouts!

I wasn't sure how well I did - I played two games of the round robin, the A-side against GWU and the game against Catholic (which only had one side). I was pretty disappointed because I never got to tackle Catholic's flyhalf (my job as a flanker), but I think I was making the GWU flyhalf pretty nervous by the end of that game. And even if I was kind of confused, I had FUN. I got into so many rucks and went in support of a whole bunch of runs.

And I hear I did okay. Well enough that Deanna told me I was permanently a flanker. Which is exciting, but I will be sad if I never get to play in the back triangle again. But - FLANKING!!!!!! IS SO MUCH FUN! I get to scrum!! And get lifted in line-outs! (I didn't get to do a whole lot of that, but hopefully more once I get some practice!)



Injury report:

- Lots of cuts and bruises. Heurich field is FULL of rocks, so my knees are covered in stylized shooting star patterns in a nice blood red. However, between the cold and the mud, I didn't realize I'd broken the skin at all until I showered. (HA!)

- Lost my contact. During the first game, some girl stuck her finger in my eye. I attributed the blurry vision then to the mud that was certainly in my eye, and for the rest of the day figured my funny vision was from: mud and rain; weariness; alcohol; drunkeness and weariness. Then when I tried to take my contact out at 3am, it wasn't there. And boy, was I confused.

- Face chafing. At first I was really confused about how I got sunburnt just on the far sides of my face (forehead to cheekbone, outside of my eyes), until I remembered that in the scrum, I had those places on my face pressed up against props' shorts - shorts covered in thick, rough mud. Mmmmmm. Even have a tiny abraision under my left eye, probably from a pebble. (I mentioned it this morning at the carwash, and Krysi nodded knowingly and called it "scrumface.")