September - Rugby, More Rugby (USM) and the Northern Lights

 As we start to wind down the assignment in Sweden, we have slowed the travel a little. We still have plans to go to England at the end of October and we're planning for our end of assignment holidays. So we need to save money now to make sure we can afford it all, and we can afford everything we need when we get back to Australia.

On top of all of this, September was pretty filled up with rugby games and tournaments, which saw us travelling all over Sweden.

On the home front, we have started the momentous task of sorting out our Lego. We brought over a huge amount of our bricks so we could complete some sets over here and we've also purchased quite a bit in Sweden. Our first step was to check the sets we currently had assembled to make sure they had all their bits - some had been hit with soccer balls, or been knocked over a few times - so we needed to make sure nothing was missing. Then we started to pack down all of our bricks. We'd taken about 4 big plastic boxes full over to Sweden and we're already panicking about how much space we will have to take things back. By sorting the bricks out, we have been able to stack bricks of the same type which has reduced the overall space needed.  A random jumble of bricks has a lot of space between each brick, while a neat stack of bricks has no airgaps.

We've also been enjoying the solar activity lately, we've been getting some Northern Lights visible from the shore just near our place. They are not really visible with the naked eye, but the cameras can pick up some of the colours:

No Northern Lights here - but a nice shot of the Turning Torso

In rugby news, I played my first Semi-Final against Erikslund on the 31st of August and we took the win 33-32.

Since the finals were an aggregate of two - we needed to play Erikslund in Stockholm for the final leg on the 7th Sep. We had a led of one point, so we needed to win or draw in order to move to the grandfinal.  Lund defeated Stockholm Exiles, so the winner would play Lund for Grand Final, and we had beaten Lund previously.

The drive to Stockholm was about 6-7hours, so rather than take a very early start, Kris and I decided to make a weekend of it. Tomas decided to stay at home, so Kris, Cameron and I headed off to Stockholm on Friday morning. We stopped in at the EBricks Lego store on the way up and then the Mall of Scandinavia - Sweden's biggest mall. We had dinner in the mall and checked out their large Lego store also. By then it was getting late, so we retired to our hotel, with plans of seeing Stockholm the next morning.

By the time we were all awake on Saturday it was time to start getting ready for the rugby, so we had a slow morning and then headed out to Erikslund. We played a good game in warm conditions, and were dominant around most of the field, but unfortunately we had three intercepted passes that were taken by a competitive sprinter, who scored each time, and we lost 28-14. This meant that we missed out on the grand final (Lund went on to beat Erikslund).

After the game we needed to drop some friends off at the Stockholm Train Station and by then it was starting to get late and we were tired from the game, so we decided to have an early night. We did briefly consider a quick trip into Stockholm Old Town, but there was a marathon on and the area was flooded with police and runners. So instead we headed back to the hotel, had some dinner and got an early night.

Sunday morning we were awake and packed fairly early, but knowing we had a 7 hour drive made us reconsider spending too long in Stockholm and instead we got an early start home.  We hadn't seen any of Stockholm, but we had been there before and the aim of the trip was rugby.

The next big rugby event was the Youth Swedish Masters (USM), which was a Sweden-wide tournament. Cameron was playing in the P18s and Tom in the P16s. The games were played in Vänersborg, which was about a 4-5 hour drive away, so the boys headed up on Friday afternoon on a team bus. Kris and I stayed home as we had an important event - a Smash Into Pieces concert at Slagthuset.

First I have to comment about how cool it is going to a concert at a place called "The Slaughter House" (Slagthuset was originally Malmö's slaughterhouse and the name translates directly to that). Kris and I debated driving to Vänersborg after the concert, but it started at 8pm, so we probably wouldn't arrive at Vänersborg until 2am. So, we decided the quickest and easiest way to get to the concert was to ride (it was only 2.5km)

The concert was awesome, and well worth staying in Malmö for. The concert hall was quite small and we were fairly close to the stage:

After the concert we rode home and had an early night. The next morning we woke at 4am and were on the road by 5.  We arrived at Vänersborg just in time for Cameron's warm up for this first game.

The tournament was structured in a pool for each age group, with the top two teams playing off for a grand final and the third and fourth playing off for bronze. The P16s games were two 12minute halves and the P18s were two 15minutes.

Last year Cameron had played for a combined Skåne Team which won the P18s and Tomas played for MRC who came second behind Stockholm Exiles. This year both teams were MRC teams.

The P16s pool was:

Stockholm Exiles,
Malmö Rugby Club,
Erikslund Rugby,
Uppsala Rugby Football Club, and
Borås Rugby FC.

The P18s was:
Malmö Rugby Club,
Stockholm Exiles,
Uppsala Rugby Football Club,
Enköping Rugbyklubb Ungdom,
STHLM United (EKF-HIF-ARG-SHA) - Stockholm United (Erikslund, Hammarby, Attila, Stockholm Sharks)
Vänersborg RK

Day 1 was a fairly sunny and warm day and we were split between two grounds for the two teams.

The first game of the day for us was 9:35, P18s Malmö vs the home club, Vänersborg. The results for the first day were:

P16s:

MRC vs Erikslund (Win 7-3)
MRC vs Stockholm Exiles (Loss 5-0)
MRC vs Uppsala (Win 31-0)

The P16s finished the day with 1 win and 2 losses, second on the ladder behind Stockholm, but looking good with percentage. The game against Exiles had been a close one, with Exiles scoring right at the end.

P18s

MRC vs Vänersborg (Win 10-0) - Cameron scored one of the tries in this game off a rolling maul
MRC vs Uppsala (Win 0-17)
MRC vs Enköping (Loss 14-19)

The P18s came out of Day 1 with 2 wins and a loss. Enköping had been the silver medalists the previous year, so were always going to be a tough team. The game was also played 13-a-side as Enköping had a series of injuries so requested the game be played as 13s. This was the only game Cameron missed as he was playing flanker and the flank position was dropped for the game. The P18s finished top of the ladder at the end of day 1.

Day 2 started very foggy and cold, but the sun came out by the end of the day.

The day started at 8:25 with Camerons P18s vs Stockholm United.

The pool game results:

P16s:

MRC vs Borås (Win 22-0)

The P16s locked in second place with a good percentage, and would face Stockholm Exiles in the Grand Final.

P18s:
MRC vs Stockholm United (Win 10-0)
MRC vs Stockholm Exiles (Win 12-10)

The P18s finished top of the table with a tight win over Stockholm Exiles (this game was also played with 13 players at Exile's request).

P16s Pool

P18s Pool

The first final was Tomas' P16s vs the Stockholm Exiles. The game was a close one with Malmö starting the scoring with a penalty goal - this made them the only team to score over Exiles for the whole tournament. The Exiles then scored two unconverted tries. The end of the game see-sawed with Malmö on the attack and close to the try-line several times but small mistakes stopped them from being able to score and the game ended with a 3-10 loss. Tomas took out the Silver Medal.

The next game was Cameron's P18s vs Stockholm Exiles, this was a nail biting game that saw Malmö win 10-5 with some amazing defensive plays.

Repeating the results from last year, Cameron took out the gold for P18s and Tomas took silver for P16s - very impressive when you consider that it is the entire Swedish championships and the MRC teams get a lot less game time than those from Stockholm.

The rest of September was fairly quiet, as we all recovered from a few hard weeks of rugby.  My season has now finished up, so I have started my preseason with some interval run training and the boys have a couple of games in Denmark in the first few weeks of October.