Crusaders IV at home

Grimsby Gentlemen vs Crusaders IV

Venue: Alway School

Weather: mid twenties - a really nice day for a game

Referee: Brian Chapple (supposedly)

Team:  Oakville did not show

Where's the beef?

Crusaders could not get enough players for the game on Saturday (a little late in telling us) so we had a small practice.  New acquisition, Chris Fothergill missed his chance to play his first game with Grimsby but should be able to play this Saturday against Stratford (if they don't cry off).

Chris

Last November Canada hosted and played the New Zealand Maori All Blacks at BMO field in Toronto and even though we lost it was a sell out game of about 22 000 spectators.  The most ever to watch a 15 a side game in North America (there have been 50 000 at the Las Vegas Sevens).  So why do the real All Blacks play the USA in Chicago this November and not play Canada?  There are 6.6 million rugby players in the world in 119 countries of which 2.36 million are registered and 4.3 million are non-registered.  Of those England itself has 2 028 348 players itself (that is where the All Blacks go after the USA) but the number two country is the USA with 1 402 962 players.  There is a huge audience in the Chicago area and half the tickets for Soldier's Field were sold in three days.
The third most players are in Australia (483 000) then South Africa (387 000), France (359,022), Ireland (177,604), Fiji (156 140), New Zealand (150 000),Canada at 129 131 then Japan (119 500).  Note Fiji has more rugby players than New Zealand.

Hopefully Grimsby will get a few more players in the next few years with the introduction of rugby at Blessed Trinity a triple A catholic high school in Grimsby.  We have being trying to get in there for awhile and  Jim Graff made a proposal which they seemed to have accepted.

I tried to send around an email with a picture of myself getting stitched up on the sidelines early in a game in 1977.  It was the last game of the season and the Hamilton Hornets playing Balmy Beach and the winner would be the Ontario champs (present day Marshall).  This was before substitutes were allowed and we would have had to play one man sort but the referee held up the game to allow one of the players, Dr. Mike Taylor, to put in a couple of stitches and I returned. Hamilton won the game 15 to 3. It was sent to me because it is the 60th anniversary of the Hamilton Hornets this year.  This picture and the article appeared in the Hamilton Spectator.  Some people could not open it because they were using their phones (get a real computer) and I wanted to put it here but I can't figure out how to do it.

An announcement will come very soon about our Trillium grant which will be good news.

Next game (hopefully) is this Saturday July 12th at home against Stratford.

Hey did you see that those skinny under-fed football fall downs from Germany beat Brazil with a converted try.  Way to go boys.