Clemson 24 UGA 0
Clemson, South Carolina
Friday August 30, 2003, 8pm
Referee: Parker Carlisle
We went up to Clemson for our first game of the year and played under the lights... they had nice new grass, which was a pleasant change (but we'll see how it stands up to the football parking treatment), and all sorts of traffic 'cause of the Hank Williams, Jr concert.
|
|
We had an extremely young backline (including our outside center Pete, who'd been to a grand total of one practice) but expected our forwards to hold their own. The game started off being pretty messy. No, well, ok, the whole game was pretty messy, but what do you expect from a couple of teams with only a few practices in them?
Our forwards had trouble winning clean ruck ball, which is a problem when that's what you live off of, and our backs got very little clean ball all game and Blake did a good job at flyhalf getting what he could out of it. Clemson scored 3 first half tries at the 20th, 28th, and 34th minutes, all by their scrum half. They were scrappy tries that came off of broken play and, basically, they were Clemson's reward for playing most of the game in our half.
The halftime score was 19-0, Clemson scored a sceond half try in the 55th minute to make the final score 24-0.
We had a penalty drop-goal attempt bounce off the upright and crossbar and bounce out in the second half and had some promising play in places, but were unable to string much together due to all sorts of things you're used to seeing in the first game.
 Yeah, it's a lousy picture, but we only have about 4 that aren't completely dark or blurry, so take what you can get, eh? |
Our man of the match was Blake Richter.
1 Michael (Brian Flaherty - 40th)
2 Eric Rogers (Brian Sanders - 40th)
3 Josh Feller (Chris Stradtman - 60th)
4 Chad Leathers
5 Ethan Beck
6 Brian Flaherty (Daniel Van Dijk - 40th)
7 Pete Bigham
8 Daniel Van Dijk (Will Brantley - 40th)
9 Graham Swartz
10 Blake Richter
11 Case Gregg
12 Marc Thomas (Charles - 40th)
13 Pete
14 Nima Soltane
15 Kevin Wilson
There were a stack of subs in the second half but I didn't get them down and don't remember them.
Clemson 39 UGA 0
As you can see if you read the lineup below, we had a lot of brand new guys playing (which is to say, I have no idea what their last names are), and we were very pleased by the effort they put into the game. We had some success with the forwards picking and going, but Clemson was a bit more experienced and it showed in ball retention. Our guys played hard the whole game despite being exhaused about 15 minutes in, which is what we were looking for.
The highlight of the game for me was in the second half, they had a scrum just inside our half. The ball went out left and I noticed our entire tight 5 looked just dead tired, but when Clemson broke the line and took it towards the try zone all 5 of them got down there to defend. Anyway, Clemson was up 24-0 at half and put in 3 more second half tries for the 39-0 final.
1 Moose
2 Chris Stradtman
3 Scott
4 Eric
5 Neil
6 Brian Sanders (Brian Flaherty - 40th)
7 Eric Rogers
8 Will Brantley
9 Clint
10 Mark Thomas
11 David
12 Charles
13 Pete
14 Sean
15 Garrett
I don't doubt there are a billion errors, feel free to let me know.
 Chris Stradtman: A moment of zen |