March 21, 2007 by jeffkd
The AUTC juggernaut descended upon Geelong on Monday the 5th of July. Jezza and Sima getting the accreditation just before the accreditation centre shut meaning all players were fine to play the 9am timeslot the next morning.
Monday night saw the first official Kangaroo Court – the t-shirts were handed out (special thanks o Marty Green for the design and Kat for the slogan) with the appropriate slogan of ‘Touch Me’ on the front followed by ‘who am I kidding… Just f%$k me’ on the back.
The Court saw Adrian Sim handed the tour dunce award which went to the person who made the biggest screw up on the day, Adrian’s effort involved misdirecting five of our teammates and almost causing them not to make it (bearing in mind we only had 9 players!)[These 5 players had all driven from adelaide in ONE carolla seca loaded to the brim with luggage and players!] After Court the team ate at its regular haunt, the Mexican Grafitti where it received a substantial discount courtesy of e-banc dollars. The majority of the team then headed to Eureka for the night where everyone ended up smashed, a good way to finish a long day!
Day 2 saw the team involved in its first matches, a first-up challenge against Deakin (last years winners and this years favourite) saw AUTC go down 4-5, although some dodgy reffing could be held up to blame, for example when you get caught from half, it’s a rollball not a penalty tap, and if the opposition are offside you generally get a penalty not a touch being counted!
A long break saw the team devise some post-try celebrations for the second game – and they were used to good effect as AUTC thumped the Uni of Ballarat 12-3! Tuesdays Court session again saw Adrian handed the tour dunce award, this time for getting lost on his way back to the hotel the previous night (It took him an hour and a half to complete a fifteen minute walk!) The team then headed of to Mexican Grafitti where they entertained the Uni SA mixed side.
The controversy quickly followed after tea with the majority of the team piking and heading back to the hotel for a ‘quiet night’, you can feel the heart strings pulling. This did not deter Kat, Jezza or Sima who stayed true to the University Games spirit and went out and got schmammered!
Wednesday morning saw another early game at 9am, however Sima, Jezza and Kat refused to play until the rest of the team made up for their softness from the previous night. The 6 softies were made to perform the infamous ‘public dog’ for a minute before the start of the game! Special mention must go to Dutchy and DM (Michael) for their ‘humping of the leg’ routines!
The AUTC, once more a unified team went on to record an 8-3 victory against VUT! This had them finish second in their pool and play the third placed team from the other pool in a match to determine who made the semi-final.
The quarter final saw AUTC up against UM (Melbourne Uni), Simas old team. And with the amount of time that Adrian had spent with his old ‘friends’ from UM we were not sure whether Adrian was going to rock up in an Adelaide Uni shirt or a UM shirt. He ended up playing for us! And AUTC got out to a quick 2-0 touchdown lead with Kat getting her first touchdown to open the scoring before a J-Dog dive in the mud gave AUTC their second. Up by two at halftime, moment of the tour occurred just after half time when after Jezza broke through from half and got over the tryline, a quick pass to Cere whilst yelling down down down (as in score the touchdown) should have resulted in killing of the game, however, Cere held the ball for approx. 3 seconds before looking up and saying ‘down?’ When the yes answer was yelled out, just as she went to put the ball down, Cere got touched! UM then came back to level the scores before a classic AUTC move saw Cody touchdown to give AUTC the lead. UM must have thought Sima did have on his old shirt as they threw him an intercept pass and Sima went length of the field to score the final touchdown giving AUTC a two touchdown win!
Epic. That was the word used to describe the AUTC semi-final against La Trobe. With a scoreline of 13-12, other phrases such as ‘Where was the defence?’, ‘Can you guys defend?’ were also heard around the traps. Jezza’s view is why bother defending and then having to ruck the length of the field when you can let in the touchdown, get the ball back at half way and then get a whole set of six to attack the line!
The start of the game saw three touchdowns in a row before there was a forced change of possession!! In a game that ebbed and flowed, AUTC scored right on half time to level the scores at 7-all! Straight after half-time, Jezza scored his length of the field intercept to put AUTC up by 1. After that AUTC got up by 2 but just couldn’t put the game away and they were made to pay when La Trobe got up by 1 touchdown with minimal time to play, AUTC got a quick touchdown just before the siren went. This levelled the game at 12-all and forced us into a drop-off situation.
AUTC had the ball first but the expected touchdown did not come as J-Dog dropped a sitter from Sima to give La Trobe the chance to win the game. However a forward pass gave AUTC the ball back, and a big run by the Sim Dog who switched in Dutchy who popped a neat little pass to J-Dawg who dove in to score the winning touchdown. Game oft eh tournie this was, and it wasn’t suprising to see the team really party hard that night!!
Another trip to Mexican Grafitti with the ebanc dollars was on the cards and boy was everyone happy about it. The team then went to Eureka with everyone coming out! Special mention goes to Holly who vommed before she came out but backed up to party on! Where was the effort on Tuesday party pooopers???!!!
The tour dunce award went to Sima again Wednesday night, this time he received the award for ‘traditions sake’! It was also revealed that in six years of Uni Games, Sima had not received the award once, therefore the team only thought it fair that he should receive the tour dunce award a few times to help him grasp the importance of it.
It was a big night Wednesday and it was tough getting up on Thursday, but the AUTC tour party thought of all those cold Wednesday nights they had gone out and trained, they thought of all the sacrifices people at the club had made like…. Oh well im sure they will let you know the sacrifices they made themselves! So the moral of the story is we got up in the morning and went out to the fields to cheer on UniSA despite our hangovers. The build up to the gold medal game was a nervy one, UniSA were never really in the match against La Trobe for third place – was this an omen?? Ceri and Holly did their usual thorough warm-up of a run to the hockey goals and back, J-Dog led the SUG way with his warm-up consisting of taking of his jacket!
The players took the field in the Grand Final and it was a solid first half with AUTC taking a 2-touchdown lead into the half time break. Simas inspired half time speech helped guide the team to an 8-7 victory over Deakin, although if the game had gone for any more time, there would have been nothing left in the tank.
The team then went back to the sea-mist apartments before heading out to collect their gold medals. The team then invaded KFC for their final night dinner
Back at the hotel a secret mutiny was being hatched against the sheriff. This resulted in Kat being anointed with the sheriffdom for the final meeting…, this was a short lived experience with the J-Dog taking control of the group for the final night. The final night saw the uinsighted Mel make her first appearance, and with team shots going down a treat, courtesy of UniSA :), it was an awesome night!
AUTC are already taking expressions of interests for next years tour, where we will not only be looking to defend the gold medal won, but also defending the title of the University of FUN after partying harder than UniSA or Flinders Uni!
GO AU!
(Authored by Jezza. Team Members Adrian Sim, Jeremey Smith, Jeffrey Dutschke, Cody Morris, Michael (DM) Ritchie, Kat VanDiemen, Holly Boulderstone, Ceri Synnott, & Mel Penhall)
