Only two rounds remain in the 2015 AAGPS Rugby competition.
Joey’s Round 8 win over the Stanmore lads has seen the Scots boys reNEW their quest for the top position. Pythagoras would remind us that Joeys are still mathematically part of the premiership triangle.
View and Kings are now playing for pride, in consecutive weeks, against the Bellevue Hills lions. And the Shoremen from SCEGs would now be thinking more about shore dumps and SKEGs with summer approaching.
This week, Azzuri explains the deeply rooted connection between the Hunters Hill match up and the birth of Rugby.
Gary Owen III deserves a medal for his account of how the New and Shore boys would go if teleported back to ancient Athenia.
And CJ takes a three-way look at what we can expect from all six teams.
Kings v Joeys – An ancient battle reignites
by Azzuri
It’s not widely known that there is a long and acrimonious history to the current adversarial relationship enjoyed by Round 9 protagonists Kings and Joeys. The fact that the sport of rugby was spawned from this long fractured relationship has been a well-guarded secret, until now.
The acrimony that exists between the two camps has its nexus in the early 1500’s when Joeys (who supported the Papacy of Clement VII) and Kings (who supported Henry the VIII) had a little tiff about the amount of time Henry was spending on Ashley Madison hooking up with members of his extended family.
Joey’s couldn’t see the humour in the situation, so it was decided that the matter would be settled by a violent trial of strength and endurance between supporters of both camps to be fought in the depths of winter each year. It was from these tortuous beginnings that the gladiatorial pursuit we now know as rugby evolved.
Henry VIII – Kings’ supporter – would be, wouldn’t he?
Despite the passage of 500 years, the rivalry and quest for dominance between these two sides has not abated. In fact, if anything, it’s increased. This Saturday’s penultimate round of hostilities between these two ancient foes will be a stark reminder that past indiscretions have been neither forgotten nor excused.
With the sun on their backs from last week’s victory over the Stanmore Shorthorns, the Cerise and Blue will be more fired up than a bunch of arsonists at an oil refinery. Expect to see the Joe boys with flames shooting out of their noses and red mist in their eyes when they run on at 3.15 Saturday fueled on by the shrieking, blood curdling war chants of the Joey’s Rugby Mums stationed around the perimeter of Jacks bar.
Tom Horton will be hard on the ball with his jackaling counterparts. Simpson and McGrath will be looking to clean house at the breakdown and provide Clements and Jaffer-Williams plenty of ball and space to unleash their latest breakdance.
The lads from Parramatta will be looking to King Louis Heaton to lead his troops into battle and hit each breakdown with the force of a Zombie Apocalypse and speed of a herd of meth fueled bag snatchers at a bingo hall on pension day.
The forward battle will be no place for the fainthearted and expect to see the Ryan lads tear into the breakdowns like a couple of hungry hyenas who’ve been on a week-long salad cleanse. The Orpen lads along with Stubbs will look to get up in their oppositions faces and Millar will make his usually blistering return runs to finish off.
All in all, I see this as the match of the round and I’m going to call it early and give this game a potential 4.5 Bocconcini’s out of 5.
Prediction: Kings by 7
Click on Page 2 below for Olympic report of Shore v Newington
