Jamaican Touch is now on the map and I think we made an impression đ The six players that made it into the US ran our asses off, kept our heads high and represented with Pride, Guts and Determination!
Day 1 (Friday) was tough, even if we did only have 2 games. Playing in the M35 section against full squads of experienced players it was a fast learning curve for the 5 people that had never played a competitive match, or been on a full sized pitch! Blinds will go down in the record books for getting the first try for Jamaica, but all the players should go down in history for their efforts on the pitch. Although fitness levels were severely tested we never stopped trying, but it was inevitable that naiivety and tiredness crept in towards the end of matches, that led to the score lines being unflattering. 13-3 and 9-3 defeats to Tumeke and Cayman sound a lot worse than they were, one of them was 3-2 at the half with us clearly still in the hunt.
Once the games were over the newbies (Blinds, Skip, Grumpy, Bullit & Chin) spent the rest of the day hiding from the high Florida heat whilst soaking up as much of the atmosphere as they could, watching, studying, admiring and learning from all the games going on around them. Meanwhile Tonka went off to ref a few games and try to remember what to do having not officiated a match in 2 years.
Day 2 got off to an early start with a match against New York at 8 am! NYC brought a huge squad to this Tourney and finished in the top 3 in all categories, winning a couple of them (including ours). I think we rattled their cage by scoring on the games opening drive with our favourite move, so we spent the next 39 and a half minutes on the back foot. They rushed our drives to knock our inexperienced players off their stride and we got little sympathy when they shot early đ Still the defence was much better today and we scrambled hard under seemingly constant pressure to end up 9-1.
An 8-1 loss to Orlando was another strong performance, but a little bit disappointing. By now we had picked up 3 replacements, one of whom had actually played Touch before. The extra players, if anything, threw us off our rhythym and we should have done better.
Our final outing of the tournament was against the 3rd place team from the Mixed Open category – Galaxy San Diego. After a slow and disjointed start we had just got into the match with Skip’s first try when a weather warning was issued with torrential rain and lightning. All teams headed for cover in the nearest bar where instinct took over – the Guinness and Chicken Wings could not be avoided! Once the skies cleared we returned to the pitch to complete a 15 minute 2nd half, but in spite of Skip completing her hat-trick we weren’t quite able to get back into contention ending the game 6-3 down.
I would say the only negatives, or disappointing things for me were:
1. We weren’t able to get one victory under the belts, and
2. We didn’t get time to talk to Mr Walters to give the guys a taste of proper coaching.
There were so many positives that I am immensely proud of how everyone conducted themselves, grew as players and learnt from their experiences.
Blinds, Skip and Tonka all finished on 3 tries with Bullit on 2 and happy to say most of them were proper Touch tries rather than just improvisation.
5 matches with mainly no subs and 5 matches reffed came to just over 6 and a half hours pitch time in 2 days and anyone that knows Touch will understand that was a lot of running, especially for a 46 year old that’s not been getting enough exercise lately. That said I actually felt stronger going home than arriving đ
I would have loved it if more people could have seen the finals as the videos never really capture just how fast the matches are, how nice the setting is and how large the defensive gap is – it only has to be a mninimum of 5m remember, the space is at the ref’s discretion!
The presentation ceremony was awesome, especially when the crowd cheered ‘Jamaica, Jamaica..’ as one when we went up to receive our award. Tonka also passed his assessment for reffing so is now a level 2 – something else we have to work on getting more of ye involved! Obviously I can not tell you what went on at the party as it was a tour, but suffice to say it was fun.
Big thanks to OJ, Jean, Chowie and everyone else that helped the weekend go well and made us feel welcome đ
As we move into phase 2 of our development we have definitely put down a strong marker to follow. A lot of things are afoot over the next 12 months and here’s hoping the more we grow as an organisation the better we will become at the logistics and the more likely it will be to get Visa’s!
Next up is hopefully Cayman in March so see you there!!!
