We had eight FRFC guys who had not experienced the Savannah tournament before, who hopefully had a good time and although we didn’t manage to win any of the three matches we played, the squad improved through the experience and got to know each other a lot better over the weekend.

Savannah was pretty quiet due to the parade not being tied in with the weekend and I’m guessing the economy – which made it easier for our guys to stay out of trouble (a good thing!). Also – Savannah was bloomin’ freezing! None of us had winter clothes and although the sun came out on Sunday just in time to wake up those blasted little black, biting flies – I think some of us managed to return with a windburn and that was about it!

Thanks to all the guys who made the trip. I am not a fan of losing or even sifting through lessons learned in losses, but I’ll do a bit of that in the match write ups because I honestly feel that everyone put in some effort and did not whine at each other or look to place blame. I respect that in a teammate and look forward to these guys playing for Frederick in some important wins in the future.

The first match on Saturday against a large (67 of them) group of touring Irish prison officers was actually a decent challenge for Frederick and one that we really should have won – but a little bit of tactical naivety and the underlying influence of Call-me-a-Cabs meant that we came close but not quite close enough. Before we go further I just want to point out these Irish guys were a great bunch had a scrum that would go on to dominate (if not stuff) every team they played and seemed to be enjoying the experience of Savannah.

Although the pack really struggled at the scrum, John Astill got a lot of practice in digging the ball out and he and Cooper definitely progressed together. Cooper was also able to link up nicely with Dog Shackleford at Fly Half and with hooker Telly Chappell on loan from Buffalo, the scrum feeds went well – a lot of errors seen against Richmond were worked out.

The Irish got on top after about 10 minutes slotting a penalty and then went on to drive over a maul from a 5m lineout to move further ahead 0 – 8. It was in the backs that we looked to have an edge – Jason Evenhuis at outside center was put into so much space with the line beckoning that he became agoraphobic, scared of sunlight or both – shipping on a ball that he could have just run in. The cover defense got enough pressure in to snuff out the move. However the backs continued to penetrate and just before the half a nice move was finished off with Steve Strickland diving in at the corner to score bringing Frederick back in the game at the half down but not out at 5 – 8. We rotated our squad at the half and looking at Walt Winn’s scrum statistics managed to level things out in the scrum in terms of winning our own ball (in the first half we lost 6 out of 8 on our own ball, in the second half only 1 out of 6). The ball was still pretty low quality as we were going backwards but the stats at least show some signs of us adapting the pressure.

The two teams played each other evenly in the second half with the Irish team managing to score from another lineout drive close to the end to run out winners and handing Frederick a 5 – 13 loss.

A few standout moments come to mind – Scott Wade put up a great kick from his wing position and followed up to put in a superb tackle on the receiver. Jamie Romano was strong at inside center and as I mentioned earlier, Jason Evenhuis got into space on several occasions, looked solid out there.