Quickfire with Olovsson

As the playoffs for the Guinness Singapore Rugby Women’s XV 2009 looms, Sruwomens spoke to Susanne Olovsson, team manager cum forward from the Royal Selangor Club about the Dingoes and their challenege this weekend. Also a national prop for Sweden, Olovsson has been living and working in Malaysia since 2002.

How were the RSC Dingoes formed?

RSC Dingoes was formed in early 2008 by players from all walks of life who share a passion for rugby.

It was myself and the captain Wei that had a discussion due to so many girls was asking me if they could play contact somewhere as well. We kicked it off and it continued. The coaches that came on board last year have improved the consistency and sound planning needed to move forward.

The Dingoes have a good mix of both locals and foreigners between the ages of 16 - 35. Some of them have experiences in touch rugby; football (a few of whom are Malaysian national players), boxing, weightlifting and a handful are beginners in any form of contact sports.


How did RSC come to join the Singapore Women’s XV league and how have the Dingoes found it has found the NRC 15s league so far?


We( the coaches and me) were thinking how we could get the team to play games and eventually start a Malaysian league.

So I got this idea that we possibly could join the SRU league as in my other sport floorball, the Malaysian team joins the Singapore league as they didn’t have their own until now, so I contacted SRU if that could be a possibility.

The league has been exciting and a great learning curve for the future for these girls. Our goal before start of the league was, exposure to the game for the players and participation. Possibly one win.


What are RSC's expectations leading up to the playoffs against SRC this weekend?

Our goal now is to make it to the final as we believe that we have a good chance as the girls have improved enormously just during these few games. We are a different team coming into the playoffs then we were in the first game of the league when we played SRC.

... Read More

Summary only...

Rugby

by Tettyana Jasli

---

My left big toe nail is hanging open.

It’s quite fascinating. I can sort of swivel it open like a door on a hinge. Underneath the yellowish layer of the nail, I can see the soft pinkness of the layer of newly formed skin. Soon, I will be able to peel it off completely.

Plucking dubiously at it, I feel a sense of déjà vu. Barely four weeks ago, my right big toe nail was in a similar predicament after the exertions of the Guinness NRC 7s.

It’s a good thing my mother hasn’t seen the monstrosity that is my left big toe nail yet, though. She’s already voiced her objections to the muddy rags I bring home, the purple bruises and the other monstrosity of my right big toe nail.

Despite all this though, I’ve been rather pleased by the way she has reacted to me playing contact rugby. I played touch rugby during my junior college days, so when my friend Hui Ting persuaded me to try out contact with Bucks Rugby one July evening last year, I vaguely told my mother I was going for rugby, leaving out the delicate fact that the rugby I was going to be playing was the kind which involves people ramming into others, getting up, and then doing it again.

That evening, I trundled down to my first contact rugby session, together with Ting, former junior college classmate, now Princeton sophomore and fully-fledged rugby jock. She had persuaded me to drag myself down for the session with Bucks Rugby. The first thing we did was tackling practice. Maybe it was because it was my first time, but I really don’t think I’ve ever been tackled as hard. Ting weighs around 120 pounds and is about 1.64 m tall, but boy, she sure can tackle. Well, I came home that night feeling like I’d been in a car wreck, valiantly pretending that I had been playing touch.

Well, I’ve stopped doing that, at any rate. Pretending, I mean.

I don’t know exactly when my mother finally wised up, but I suspect it was either when I started bringing home T-shirts with muddy skid-marks, or when out of exasperation, I decided to demonstrate the mechanics of a tackle to my brother.

In any case, I think she’s caught on that the rugby I play is actually contact and not touch because every time I watch rugby on television, she takes one look at the scrums and starts fretting that rugby is such a rough game and squints anxiously at me.

Which is a good thing, in a sense. Sure, it does mean that I get a little more flak from my mother when I get a bruise on my right thigh or when I bring home a particularly muddy, sodden pair of socks. But for my mother to recognise my participation in which my interest most likely settles, it means a lot to me.

... Read More

Summary only...

The Perlious Adventures of the Rugby Baby: What Not To Do On The Rugby Field

by Yin Mei Lenden

---

I have to confess, (and thereby lose any sort street cred I otherwise might have had) that I was thrilled to have been invited to train with the National team, being only a rugby baby of only one year of age. For me, this was less an opportunity to be on the team and play against Hong Kong than a great chance to learn. What I was to learn is that it's impossible to train for a team sport and not become competitive. As the trainings went on, I realised a greater urgency to do well so as to get on to the team. My previous goal of "gaining experience" was soon revealed to me as naive and simplistic.

National training lasted a paltry three weeks where I wondered if it was enough to turn me into a lean, mean, fighting machine (it was not). The dreaded fitness sessions were presented as (more) manageable 15-minute sessions just before training ended for the night to condition us for the last 15 minutes of a game when we would be exhausted and ready to collapse. But Sam stressed that those were the most important minutes of a game for that was what could determine its ultimate outcome. And so it was that training would end with us trying to forget the exhaustion accumulated from the last 1 hour and 45 minutes of training and run as if our lives depended on it. Many things were learned during those fitness sessions. I, for one, discovered the meaning of life. Life, is not a marathon, is not a race. It is a sprint with someone running behind you trying to step on your heels.

What I constantly marveled at was the fact that we trained and played as a team. That clubs and factions were forgotten as we rushed to a line out or scrambled to form a scrum. Suddenly, the person I had hitherto glowered at across the scrum, was behind me, supporting me and giving me that extra shove against opposition scrums. And so I learned to work as a team, just as I learned to perfect my line outs and scrums and that suffering meant a developing of character. Memorising patterns of run drove me slightly up the wall and while I finally understand the mechanics of a switch, I still can't execute it successfully. I'm sticking to short shorts at the moment and hoping that 90 kilos of speeding flesh will throw off the opposition more successfully than one of my switches.

The three weeks of training culminated for me in all of 7 minutes on the field and that compounded the sheer thrill and delight of being On The Field! Playing! In National Colours! And executing a pretty good scrum!* (after all my collapsing ones. Eeeps.) and the extreme disappointment of mucking up both my line outs. But it was a start for me and something that I cherish and feel privileged to be a part of. I'll be back next year, hopefully less foolish and armed with the ability to side step. Sam Chan's Mantra this whole period has been "One command, one action." And so my command for me next year is to play well. Let's see if the action carries forth.

*Yes, my enthusiasm is embarrassing but I maintain Rugby Babyhood and cling to the novelty of My First National Game! So bite me.

... Read More

Summary only...

Kazakhstan truly is an interesting place

by Sophie Gollifer

---

Kazakhstan truly is an interesting place. Please note that the word ‘interesting’ is neither negative nor positive…

It was actually everything I thought it would be…and more. Whether or not I was ready for it, I, along with our whole team (inclusive of two coaches, one ecstatic team manager and of course physios; G-Mei and Pretty Cloud) were in for seven days of tortuous freezy post game showers; in which I called out for my roommate in vain while trying to stifle my sobs, sumptuous yet suspicious meals, dry weather (not good for the skin), extreme language barrier, an odd feeling of nostalgia when it came to being locked in my haunted maids quarters (my private hotel room) and worst of all being at the mercy of the Kazakhstani sanitation system.

“We will hardly have time to breathe” quote by Capitan WANG after reading the itinerary, and boy was she right. After having Kazakhstan’s rich yet delightful culture shoved readily down our throats we soon got into a harsh yet productive routine. This included rising early greeting the sunrise followed by a shower; in some cases in pairs… (errr to save time), a light yet heated breakfast and then our scheduled daily training or every alternate day important match preparation.

During match time we pulled together but it was off the field that I felt we really bonded. Do not be fooled by the letters O.T.O.T. This was often a time to invade one another’s personal space or to steal your roommates tiger biscuits which she denied you earlier. Constant video game wars were on the keep up the competitive spirit while there were long queues and battles for the physios attention. Overall I feel that we did what we travelled thirty hours to do, play rugby, love it and make our mark.

... Read More

Summary only...