Japan Tour Diary Entry Number 5

Day 5 Konichiwa!

Today is quarter-final day. Up at 6am for a 6.15 breakfast. All the boys were pretty stuffed from the France game so went to sleep early. We are excited to take on Higashi as they are the top school in Japan and after watching a couple of their pool games we knew we were in for a big battle.

10am is soon here and its time to head to the stadium for our warm up. Cam and the ‘dirty dirtys’ are there ready to go and we have our best warm up so far. I look into the brothers eyes and I know that we are about to put together a top performance. We take the field, smash the Haka and then it’s time to demolish Higashi.

I’ve never been involved in a game where my team has played so well. We were hungry today and Higashi had no answer! We never eased up and at the full time whistle we had won 62-10 and qualified for the semi finals. Tries were scored by Elijah (2) Legin (2) Ayden (2) Sevu (2) Villi and Poasa. Orbyn and Sevu kicked 3 conversions each. The large crowd were stunned by the result as the local favourites depart from the tournament.

After our warm down we jump the stadium fence into the stands and find our ‘adopted parents’. It’s awesome to have about 16 parents over here supporting us and we love to hear the cow bells ringing while we play. All the players that don’t have parents here have been adopted by someone. It’s great for all of us to have someone to hug after the game and maybe get special treats from.

We had a packed lunch after the game shower up, then find good seats in the stand to watch South Africa smash Australia, and France score on full time to just sneak home against Uruguay by 2 points. I feel sorry for Uruguay as they had played so courageously after having a player sent off in the 1^st half. The semi finals are HBHS vs Tokai University Gyosei High School of Japan and Paarl Boys of South Africa vs Lyc’ee Louis de Foix of France.

Later in the evening we have a team meeting announce MVP points for the day, ‘Play of the day’ which is just a nice way of saying ‘idiot of the day’ and video analysis session. 3 MVP points went to Legin, 2 points to Ayden and Nic M, and 1 point to Joe Coventry, Harry and Sevu. Aaron gets ‘play of the day’ for his long bullet-like spiral pass to Sevu in a 2 on 1 to score. The only problem being that Sevu was less than 1m away from him at the time. Mrs Clark reads the latest emails from home and ‘the Lonely Hearts Club’ drops to 13. We have a rest day tomorrow so the boys are stoked about that. I’m excited to see what the coaches have in store for us.

Sayonara

No. 18