Your Scrumhalf Connection - Women's Rugby Blog

UPDATE: Match was successfully rescheduled, for details check out this post.

Everyone come take a ride on the Merry Go Round...remember when you were a kid and you would sit in the middle of it and your best friend would spin and spin until you couldn't take it anymore? You would try to get up after it stop moving and you would feel nausea and pukey, its all you can do to hold the vomit down...That's pretty much a description of the 2008 West League Match season, specifically the match details vs Glendale. Here is a quick summary of our the Austin Valkyries Merry Go Round ride:

Hurricane Ike moves towards the Texas coast during the week before our League Match. There are broad reports of it being the worse storm to possibly hit Austin since 1961, so the Valkyries begin to make preparations in case the storm does hit or impacts us. Typically storms are forecast to hit Austin and surrounding areas, but usually the storms move around and do not hit Austin. True to that fact Hurricane Ike did not hit until early Saturday morning and the only affected areas were surrounding Houston and Beaumont.

During all of weather drama on Tuesday and Wednesday the Valkyrie Officers and Coaches have been in close contact with the Glendale Coach and Match Secretary. On Tuesday evening both teams decide to give the storm 24-48 hours in order to gauge safety and weather conditions. The storm continues to move Northeast during the next 24-48 and weather predictions only have a risk of high winds and 80% chance of rain for match day.

However, everything begins to shift dramatically Thursday morning when our Coach receives an call from Bill Haffner that there are concerns about safety and weather conditions for this match. Our Coach and Officers spend most of their workday on Thursday working with Bill and Glendale trying to keep the match on. We had requested further information on Hurricane Ike and received a report from OEM (Austin Office of Emergency Management) at 5:15pm saying all will be clear and safe. We also requested a report from FEMA and the National Weather Service and received their report at 6:30pm that Austin was OFF the "cities at risk" list. Our coach called an emergency meeting with the Austin Blacks at Burr field at 7pm and received permission to play in wind or rain at Burr Field. We also reserved a back-up field in case there was a large amount of rain. At 7:30pm our coach called the Glendale coach and confirmed that "the game was ON" - at 9pm confirmation of match and details were sent to West, TRU, Referee and both teams that the game is ON and will be played.

The Valkyries believe all is well and we continue our match preparations in case there are problems with the Hurricane. Friday morning at approximately 9am we receive an email from Bill Haffner that the game has been cancelled and we must reschedule with Glendale. Our coach quickly calls Haffner and the discovers the reason for canceling the match (given verbally over the phone) was "the storm may hit later and prevent travel out of Austin Saturday night." After pouring a stiff drink and buying pack of cigarettes, our Coach attempts to work within new template that implies "What Glendale wants, Glendale gets."

Since we are forced to reschedule by the West, we immediately offer the next weekend for the rescheduled match. Glendale refuses saying they are attending Aspen Ruggerfest. We suggest Sunday Oct. 5th and the response is "no, it costs too much." Glendale offers a counter offer of Sept. 27 and they can guarantee a forfeit by Black Ice (League Match) and they will move our Boulder Babes League Match to Sunday.

As soon as we received this counter offer of Sept 27 complete with forfeit and moving of a match, we contacted Black Ice and Boulder and asked if they had been informed of these decisions. Of course they had no idea what was going on and we suggested they call the Glendale coach as she was offering them up. Black Ice and Boulder were both of course appalled that these arrangements would be made without being consulted, and were extremely happy we had the integrity and fortitude to contact them.

On the originally scheduled match day we continued with our plans to play rugby and we hosted our B side vs Texas State in Austin, TX at the reserved pitch. The weather was picture perfect, the rugby was even more beautiful and we had a GREAT Hurricane Ike party.

Negotiations continued throughout the next week as Glendale, Boulder, Black Ice, Austin and the West officials continued discussions about this match and the conditions thereof. Finally we received confirmation that we would play Glendale on Sept 27, 2008 in Denver (pitch to be neutral and TBD). Glendale will play the Kansas City Jazz (League Match) and then we will play our League Match against them that afternoon. We found out later that Black Ice decided to forfeit their League Match because they wanted to see the best team go to Nationals and we confirmed with them that we would give them a B side match after we play Boulder on Sunday, Sept 28, 2008.

All in this has been a huge stress and completely ridiculous as the weather in Austin on Sept 13, 2008 was absolutely gorgeous without a drop of rain and our B side threw to Pod 2 without any problems all day long. There has been plenty of speculation as to why this match was really canceled, and I have my own opinions about that, but that is for another day.

We are looking forward to our League Match this weekend against Glendale and may the best team win! It doesn't go without saying though that Glendale obviously thinks they are pretty powerful, scheduling two league matches in one day, speaking for other teams when they don't have the right...is this what having USA Rugby in your backyard does, give you false confidence and false power?

UPDATE: Match was successfully rescheduled, for details check out this post.