Rugby and back to stitching

The pink and the yellow shorts got an outing over the weekend

The girls had a fabulous time

Due to the vagaries of some fairly suspect refereeing by mostly novice referees they were robbed and finally came in 6th of twelve in the overall tournament as runners-up for the plate which is the trophy for the middle group of four. Without wishing to sound like a case of sour grapes one does wonder if the place for new referees to cut their teeth is in the biggest tournament in the English girls rugby calendar. Sadly maybe it's a damning indictment of the way the rugby fraternity views the female game that they couldn't get referees of a higher level of skill and experience - but hey-ho!

I shan't bore you with the nitty gritty - this is meant to be mainly a quilting blog not a rugby one - so I'm not going to go into detail but the girls felt that, because of some very questionable judgement on the part of most of the refs, they were beaten both in the first pool game (making them second in their pool) and subsequently in their section final by two much lesser teams which meant lots of frustrated tears as they left the pitch after the last game. However in true rugby fashion and style they showed dignity and good sportmanship to the end.

Here they are - a slightly less than conventional team photo just after finishing their last match complete with coaches and managers with their battle cry 'Where's the beach?' - no idea where that came from except the three counties which the region covers have some of the best holiday beaches in the UK. It obviously has some significance to the girls. Sarah's at the back of the girls just to the right of the coach in the pale top.

Here's one of Sarah with her two Somerset team mates after receiving their medals - completely mad! Note the afore-mentioned pink shorts and the 'Where's the beach?' pose again - sorry you just had to be there!

Here is the coach with his yellow shorts on - nuff said!

An action shot of Sarah flanking on the side of the scrum

And one of her poaching the ball from the scrum and heading off on the blind side to be tackled by the one opposition player aware of what she was trying to do. The game is certainly not without risk - Sarah took a boot to the nose in a ruck (probably accidental) just after this and had to come off as a blood injury and then a deliberate boot to the cheekbone in the final game which was completely missed by the ref - fortunately she's only got a good bruise on her cheek and a very tender nose but no broken bones. Because of the wonderful hot weather we've had this past week or so the ground was rock hard and there were several knock-outs and cases of concussion for the medics to tend throughout the day - thankfully none of them were our girls.

For any rugby fans out there ignore the fact that she was wearing the no 5 shirt - they were numbered so the RFU talent spotters would be able to identify them to go through for specialist training and development over the summer. Our team manager had naively listed the girls in alphabetical order rather than by their playing position numbers which really made for a few laughs as some of the bulky forwards were poured into the slimfit backs' shirts and the backs drowned in the forwards' tents!

The girls very nearly didn't make it to the tournament - well at least not on time anyway - as three of them got stuck in the hotel lift and had to be rescued by the fire brigade - this is Sarah with four of her team mates acting the goat in front of the appliance - lots of high spirits

And more serious horseplay at the end - one has to empty the water bottles of course - especially if it's over the coaches! He was obviously expecting it as he gave me temporary custody of his mobile phone to avoid it getting soaked prior to this.

Now onto more fabric orientated things

I decided, as the weather here in Taunton is absolutely beautiful, to do some open-air shots for these

This selection of lovely fabrics with a woven pattern came a little while ago from Cathi - from Sweden via Ireland - beautiful, thank you Cathi

This little pink heart quilt next to the clematis is a swap to go out soon - just awaiting buttons and hangers

And here's my final part of the Spring Fling Round Robin passed onto me from Kate and now sandwiched ready for quilting

Yet more hearts - this time for the 'Another Little Quilt Swap' - the recipient is less than partial to country/muddy fabrics like Thimbleberries - I think this is about as far away from that as you can get. The quilt needs to be a little bigger than all the other heart ones I've done so this is 5 rows of 5

Lastly we have a new camera - hence all the great rugby pictures, I wasn't going to bore you with the other 374! - this one will happily travel away from home

So here's a little bit of late Spring I took when trying out the macro-setting - back to glorious yellow again :o)