Irish Blog — What a great time in Ireland
By The Nelson Daily Sports
The L.V. Rogers Bombers are heading home to Canada following a long rugby tour of Ireland.
The LVR team departed from Nelson almost two weeks ago. The Mighty Bombers opened the tour with a 27-5 win over the Balgriggan Rugby Club before being brought back down to earth with a 36-12 setback at the hands of Montevia — a team sprinkled with high-level players.
The tour ending contest came against North Munster Cadets, which defeated LVR 49-14.
LVR Vice Principal Frank Marisco has made the trip with coach Michael Joyce. He has graciously accepted the challenge of blogging the tour for The Nelson Daily.
Here’s Frank’s final entry.
Wednesday, March 23
Full-on breakfast for the boys once again and I notice that quite a few are opting for the healthy choices – yogurt, fruit, and cereal.
Shane slices up a few sausages and tucks them between two slices of toast for a midmorning snack.
A few of us spend the morning touring Thormand Park Stadium – it is a new 25,000 seat stadium built specifically for Munster rugby.
Quite a few Munster players are currently on the the Irish National team and the their former head coach is now the coach of the National team.
Most of the kids bow out of this tour because the admission is eight Euros and they are pretty much broke. At 1p.m. we load the kids onto the bus and head to Shannon RFC for a light workout with Mike.
Still lots of sniffles and coughing so we know tonights game will be difficult. After practice the kids head to the Spar store for fruit and juice — stay hydrated is the message to all. At 6 p.m. we head to the Technology Institute for our game against the North Munster Cadets.
This is a “rep” team of the best 15- and 16-year-olds in the Province.
The coaches decide on three 20-minute periods and the game is on.
Right off the bat we know we are in tough as the Cadets put two tries on the board in the first five minutes. The team regroups and we start to hold out own but their firepower is just too much tonight.
Final score is 7 tries for Munster, 2 tries for Nelson (49-14).
Scorers are Jacob Kindred and Colin Robinson. Kevin Lewis gets one conversion and one penalty.
All in all, not a bad showing for the boys. A quick shower and then it is off to the Dock for a fancy meal and some awards. The kids are well fed this night with most tucking into a big traditional Irish stew.
Back to the hotel and into bed – wake up call is for 5 a.m. and then it is off to Dublin and the long trip home.
I let the boys know that before we left we told the parents that we fully expected the boys to live up to our behaviour expections on the trip.
But it was even better than that because they exceeded all of our expectations and we are all very proud of each one of them.
That’s it from Ireland.
See you soon.
