Wrapping It Up In France

If you follow my blog, you probably follow women's rugby (to some extent), and so you know that we dropped our second match to France, so I won't go into too much detail there. I will touch on a few general tour notes and give you all a little insight on how we spent our time in France. This blog entry will be a melange of tour notes and observations.

The Second Match
In a similar story line as the first match, France took advantage of scoring opportunities and we did not. We had fewer trips into France's 22 and played more defense this time. Our set pieces were still competitive, but could get better, and we weren't able to attack wide that much. This pretty much sums up France's 31-6 victory.

What's under it all is that we're not consistent and tested enough. A problem that has plagued the Women's National Team over the years is that we don't get a chance to assemble and play together enough, and we certainly don't play enough in general, both domestically and internationally. Our staff and players have been working on these obstacles over the years. This is why the 15s Residency Program is exciting. This is why a few of our top players are deciding to play overseas, where they will get more rugby. Of course, there is still work to be done, and we have a ways to go yet, but our future is promising.

Thanksgiving in France
This is the second year of my life in which I spent Thanksgiving in France. Obviously, the French don't celebrate this very American holiday, so we had to make the best of what we had. What we had was very little in terms of Thanksgiving fixings--no turkey, no stuffing, no cranberry sauce, no fall decorations--so we had chicken and fish (if you read my post on how the tour was progressing midway through, you won't be surprised by this), we made decorations for our tables, and we all expressed how thankful we are for the people and positive things in our lives.

It certainly wasn't a traditional Thanksgiving, but we were among family, we shared good food, we expressed our gratefulness together, and we made the most of what we had--sounds like the embodiment of the Thanksgiving spirit. Also, take a look at the table that team Hippos decorated. Looks like something out of a magazine, right? That table should've catapulted us straight to the top of the inter-squad competition. Instead, it got us a lame tie for third (thanks for nothing, Roshna).

Tourist Things in Montpelier
On our day off, after the first match, we had the chance to do tourist things. The lovely Kelsi Stockert has a friend who is from Montpellier, so she, JoJo and myself got a wonderful tour of the city and got to visit the Mediterranean, courtesy of Tom, Zoe and Lola.

The blustering wind blew us around a little seaside town as we explored the Mediterranean. We were only at the sea for about an hour, but we got to walk down a canal and see a bull fighting rink. Bull fighting is very popular in Southern France, but not so in the rest of the country. In Southern France, bull fighters participate in course libre bull fighting, in which the bull fighter attempts to grab a rosette from the head of a young bull.

In the city of Montpellier, we visited the cathedral. The building's high, arching ceilings loomed over us, and the cloudy sky cleared long enough for a little sunlight to streak through the stained glass windows and tint the inside with color. It was beautiful. We also walked around the shops and cafes through the narrow streets and cobblestone roads. I think I would really enjoy living in a city like that--full of history, where the closeness of the buildings and the slimness of the streets push lives together.

One of the best parts of the day was the sampling of desserts we did. We had crepes, macaroons and an assortment of other sweet delicacies. And then, we visited a couple of shops where we bought more sweet things for our friends and family back home.

All in all, our trip to France, though we had a tough time in our matches, was a wonderful experience. We learned a lot about our team, and hope to build on what we believe is a great foundation. We had a lot of fun in the city and with each other, and we met some great, hospitable people.