UGA 30 Florida 22

Sandy Creek Park, Athens, GA
Saturday February 7, 2004, 2:00 pm
Referee: Ed "Peabody" Ward

All the Pictures from the day's games
(thanks to Lindsay for taking the pictures)

It was cold. Real cold. We were playing at Sandy Creek Park again because it had been raining most of the week. At game time there were, amazingly enough, a (very) few snow flurries. Oh, and it was windy. Very windy. Which made the cold ever so much, well, colder.

Does anyone else think Charles looks just like the Piglets' logo here?

All of which means it was great rugby weather. We kicked off, florida took it up into a ruck, passed it out, and Charles Campbell intercepted and took it 15 meters for the first try of the game, less than a minute in. A nice way to start.

In the 6th minute Florida tied things up with a strong run through the entire right side of our defense. There were at least 5 missed/broken tackles. In the 10th minute Florida looked like they were going to score again until they knocked it on in the try zone. In the 18th minute they did score again, Kevin Wilson had a nice break going but the ball went to ground and the Florida wing kicked it into the try zone and won the foot race to touch down for the try, 10-5.

In the 28th minute they scored again as a 2nd row went 40 meters through several more missed tackles to make things 17-5. We finished the half well after numerous Florida penalties kept us down in their end Brian Sanders quick tapped and sent it to Alex Mitchell to score in the left corner. Half time score was 17-10 Florida.

At halftime we said a few things about tackling low and not sending too many forwards into rucks as at least a handful (heh) of our missed tackles were because our positioning was so poor. Florida came out strong in the second half and had the ball inside our 22 for almost the first 10 minutes but we defended well and they didn't score.

In the 54th minute Marc Petrini hit a 25 meter penalty kick to make it 17-13. 2 minutes later Alex Mitchell scored a try for us in the left corner to give us an 18-17 lead. 6 minutes after that Charles scored a try off a nice pass from Marc Petrini. Petrini converted to make it 25-17.

In the 70th minute Alex Mitchell scored his 3rd try of the day in the left corner to make things 30-17. Florida came right back and scored a try in the right corner off of good pressure and despite pretty good goal line defense. The kick was straight into the wind and while it was well struck it was short. 30-22.

Florida pressured some more late and almost scored again off a nice kick and chase by the wing but he knocked it on... Final score was 30-22.

I'm very pleased with how we responded to Florida's early spurt of 17 points in less than 15 minutes in the first half, we didn't get down on ourselves and it paid off.. We improved our defense in the second half and showed some good attacking ability by the backline. We have a lot of things to work on, but overall it was a good start to the season. Did I mention that it was cold?

Yes, this is a Florida guy making a break, but I thought it was a cool picture...

Man of the match was Alex Mitchell.

1 Brian Lake (Manreet - 40th)
2 Michael Manzella
3 Chris Snare
4 Charles Luke
5 Eric Stephenson
6 Josh Burkhalter
7 Kevin Spardello
8 Blake Daniel
9 Brian Sanders
10 Marc Petrini
11 Alex Mitchell
12 Charles Campbell
13 Blake Richter
14 Marc Thomas
15 Kevin Wilson

 

Florida 25 UGA 17

The second game was similar in a lot of ways to the first game. There were some good runs, some good hard play, and lots of mistakes. The referee did a good job letting the game flow as much as possible, I thought. We did a good job in the lineouts, winning most of our ball and stealing several of theirs, and had some nice runs from our back line.

Florida scored 5 unconverted tries, we scored 3 tries and converted 1, for the final score of 25-17.

A generic second game picture just to fill out this space... I didn't see one that I thought was great, but you can look at them all from the link up top if you want.

 

Man of the match was outside-center Ben (see, while I put the Bens' last names on the list below, I don't actually know which last name goes with which Ben...)

1 Brian Lake (Michael Manzella - 60th)
2 Marc Malone
3 John (Neil Beers - 60th)
4 Andrew Morrison
5 John Buchner
6 Johnathon Barbe
7 Manreet (Blake Daniel - 40th)
8 Neil Beers (Kevin Spardello - 40th)
9 Gavin (Marc Shepard - 40th)
10 Marc Thomas
11 Ben Tinsley
12 Trevor Maliro (Alex Mitchell - 40th)
13 Ben Liverman
14 Arslaan Shahid
15 David Holt

(Sorry about the possible mix up of last names...)

I don't doubt there are a billion errors, feel free to let me know.