“That wasn’t the season..."

"...that was just a game"

Written by: Miguel Ayala, Year 12

Mr. Mann’s words echoed in our minds as we came off a crushing 50-7 loss. Heads down, faces frowned and without sound, we were fuming inside. It wasn’t that we lost to our closest rivals, nor was it that we lost in the MANSAC Finals and, equally so, it wasn’t because we played our worst game ever. These were disappointing, but not the reasons why we were so angry. The problem was and is that our fans, our own fans thought that this one game was the season; they thought that this single game was representative of our whole 2013-2014 BSM Rugby season.

After the game, I heard comments like “It’s OK, you were playing against ISM” or “You did your best, ISM is so much bigger”. These attempts to console us were unintentionally insulting because they were uninformed. The general student body was unaware of our season’s victories and achievements. Furthermore, though they didn’t mean it, our fans were implying that we didn’t even belong on the same field as ISM; that we would never have a shot of beating ISM; that we were just this amateurish club and not a selective varsity team. The truth couldn’t be further from that. BSM’s rugby was played at a higher level than in previous years, and was as good as, if not better than, ISM’s.

BSM’s season was characterised by growth. The most obvious improvement was the increased participation. Last year, we often struggled to have enough players to take the field. In fact, we played the majority of the games with no subs at all. However, we saw unprecedented numbers this year; over 40 young men of all ages showed up for our first practice session, most of whom were people who had never played rugby before. Not only did this signal the increasing popularity of rugby in BSM, but it also allowed us to be more competitive. For the first time ever, we were able to field 3 full-time teams: a varsity team, a junior varsity team and a middle school team.

Under the guidance of Mr. Mann, Mr. Retzlaff, Mr. Barrett and Mr. Harfield, we developed our individual skills. Compared to that of previous years, there was a complete culture change in our training sessions. Gone were the random and unplanned hours of touch rugby. Instead, we had structure, a fitness regimen and professional-grade team drills. Although every practice was painful and arduous, the hours of training more than paid off. Several of our players were selected to represent the Philippines in Nanjing for the 2013 Asian Youth Games and for the Philippine Schoolboy’s Exhibition Match against the Hong Kong DEA Tigers (which we won). This is a testament to the personal growth of our players during the season.

Both these factors resulted in our best ever finish in the Manila Schools Athletic Conference (MANSAC). In spite of the league’s expansion to 6 teams, we managed to achieve a historic 2nd place finish at the varsity level. Out of 9 games we only lost twice. In addition, we managed to beat previous title challengers, Brent and Faith, by more than 30 points in 3 of our 5 encounters, including a 53-0 walloping of Faith in the semi-finals. These statistics indicate the remarkable step up from last year’s performance; last year we seemingly lost every match and only came 3rd in what was essentially a 3-team league. How can we be considered amateurish with outstanding results like these?

Another common misconception is that we are far worse than ISM in terms of rugby ability. It is true that they are a much bigger school, but they are not necessarily better. The reason that people accept this misbelief is that the first time we had a proper crowd to watch us was during that crushing loss. Their only impression of us was based on that one-sided loss and naturally they assumed we were over matched. Our previous 2 matches against ISM, on the other hand, show that we have the potential to beat them.

In our first game against ISM, we lost 19-31. This score line doesn’t tell the full story, though. With hard-nosed defense and industrious play from both the forwards and backs, we took an early lead. With just 3 minutes left in the game we were up 19-12. But because we had played 3 more games than ISM that day, we began to unravel. Through several fatigue-fuelled errors, ISM scored 3 unmemorable tries and managed to eke out a win in the dying seconds. Perhaps if we hadn’t played those extra games and been so tired, we might have won.

Our second meeting was testier. Once again, we quickly put on the points to secure an early lead. Going into the second half, we were once more up again, this time by 10 points to nothing. Once again, we let careless mistakes get the better of us. One cheap try came on the end of an unfortunate kicking blunder that occurred when we attempted to clear the ball from our own try line. A stray opposition hand managed to deflect the punt perfectly in to the hands of an ISM player. He simply placed the ball down on the line. 19-10. Immediately after, we witnessed the try of the season. Andrew Holgate chipped the ball at least 40 m and managed to chase down the kick, capping off his incredible solo effort with a magnificent diving try.  This brought the score to 19-15. Unfortunately, this was a case of a little too late. The buzzer sounded several seconds later.  We had scored the same number of tries; the only difference between ISM and us was that we failed to convert all of our conversion kicks. Once again, it was another game that could’ve gone either way.

Undoubtedly, despite what is commonly perceived, it is clear that the BSM rugby team is not 2 things: an uncommitted band of unathletic anemics or the whipping boy of ISM. Rather, we are a band of brothers for whom the sky's the limit. This season we accomplished more than what was expected, but hopefully with even more members and greater fan support we can strive towards a MANSAC championship next season.

Many thanks go to the dedicated coaching staff that believed in us when we didn’t believe in ourselves, and the passionate core of parents who supported us through the good and the bad. Most importantly, we honour the beloved seniors, whom we will miss dearly when we are beating ISM next season: Carlo, our Captain, Shoko, our second leading try scorer, as well as Matthew “The Trickster” Young, Arthur Chee, Zenon Santos and Fergal Feeney.

2014 BSM MANSAC Roster:

Osama Aslam

Kyle Russell

Alex Giles

Carlo Albert

Mathew Young

Kai Stroem

Johann Echavez

Josh Whyte

Miguel Ayala

Andrew Holgate

Mathew Cowley

Johannes  Eschler

Albert Rano

Ranil Abeyasinhe

Oscar Eschler

Fergil Feeney

Matteo Reyes

Antonio Thomas

Shokorino Choga

Arsalan Shamsuddin

Kyle Yu

Maiki Ueda

Jamie Young

Lachlan Doig-Henderson

Adam Lark

James Edwards

Oliver Bins

George Leather

Mark Jenkins

Ethan Utting

Andrew Melrose

Daniel Jenkins

John Becker

Written by:

Miguel Ayala, Year 12

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