RugbyRebels

Surprised no-one's got a thread about this already. Very entertaining game surprisingly. It opened up with 5 minutes of awful aimless kick-tennis and I was cringing at the thought of that being the first impression of rugby for many Yanks, but then Irish decided to play fast, wide, attacking rugby and Sarries followed them into it.

Ended up with Saracens winning 26-16, with a last minute charge-down try from Nick Tompkins denying Irish a deserved losing bonus point. Goode was MotM, deservedly so, and if you get a chance to look at the highlights, Lewington's try for Irish was an utter thing of beauty - about 6 offloads in quick succession and then pace and footwork to score.

All in all, seemed a reasonable success. Crowd of 14,800, which meant they didn't get lost in the stadium and the rugby was good enough that you'd feel hopeful that there'll be more next year. Probably won't be a London Irish home game next year though, although I'm sure Sarries will take up hosting duties if Irish aren't around.

Real shame that the pro league that the Yanks are setting up won't have a New York team in the first season; you'd've thought it'd be ideal to have them coming in off the back of this kind of promotional effort.

Puja

On a serious note i imagine Convex went and flew concorde with Nigel.

Weird thing to say...

I was going to the match, as the annual stockholders meeting was scheduled around now in Washington and I am the chairman, but it has been pushed back a month. So, spent the Saturday nursing a sick wife and working, apart from watching rugby.

I went to the Churchill Cup match there back in 2010, really nice stadium, the best that I have seen - on a par with the Clermont stadium.

Sarries have been carp for most of 2016, they certainly miss Gustard, and they would have lost yesterday if it wasn't for Goode simultaneously playing 10 & 15 to compensate for the useless Mordt. I have a feeling that they will not be the team that they were before Christmas, when they get all their players back.