Auburn 12 UGA 5

Auburn, AL
November 16, 2002, 11 am
Referee: Alex Rocca

Cold, wet, and very muddy. We started off strong with some great crashes by Hutch and good rucking we pushed all the way down to their goal line before turning it over. We controlled the first 20 minutes but only scored 1 try, when Hutch forced his way through and touched down. At some point in those 20 minutes Eric touched down for what looked like a try but the referee was blocked and by the time he got around to that side it was a mess so he called it held up and ordered a 5 meter scrum.

We did well in the set pieces (look, it's my report, I can have sentences be as Hemingway or as Faulkner as I want). Our lineouts were good, very good considering how wet it was. We stole lots of their lineouts and won most of our own. The scrums were solid and we stole a couple from then by wheeling. There were only 2 scrums with any problems all game and those were back to back near the goal line off of their attacking 5 meter scrum when both teams were, well, scrumming like it was a 5 meter scrum.

Their first try was a pick up off of a ruck on the goal line after some good pressure. Their second try was against the run of play (hey, sometimes you just gotta sound European) after we had several good phases and Chris Davis made a good run, but when he tried to pop a pass his arms were held and the ball went straight to ground. They picked it up and took it wide around the right side to score in the corner.

We pressured at the end but our last chance to score we were tackled into touch 1 meter short on the last play of the game.

They had 2 guys injured, the first thought he'd broken his ankle and the second looked like a knee. Both rode to the hospital in royal splendor in the ambulance.

Overall we played reasonably well in very sloppy conditions. We had some inexperienced guys out there and they did a good job. We tackled well and maintained possession well. If we'd had more guys run hard and low we would have had a good chance to scored a couple more tries and possibly win the game.

 

1 Josh Tedder
2 Eric Rogers
3 Chris Davis
4 Daniel Van Dijk
5 Rick Crowson
6 Brian Flaherty
7 Chris Payne
8 Brian Sanders
9 Michael Francis
10 Chase from the Great White North
11 Kevin Wilson
12 Scott Hutchison
13 Mark Thomas
14 Nima Soltane
15 Marc Petrini

Second Game

Auburn had some guys who hadn't played in the first game, so everyone who played the first game agreed to play another period... except Auburn couldn't get 15 guys. Pretty disappointing way to treat their other players. So we ended up playing 20 minutes of 10 on 10. It was very sloppy with a couple of long breaks. I don't remember the score.