Where's Wally tour 2024

Found him!

Friday morning, at a godforsaken hour, a squad of 16 Uppsala and 5 Berserkers players met at Arlanda to begin a weekend of rugby extra everything. The theme of the tour, and consequently the mandatory dresscode, was from classic children’s book Where’s Wally. Tour captains inspected the troops and went over the rules – some of them were then promptly forgotten about for the rest of tour.

The early start was to facilitate training already on the Friday. The team arrived in Richmond at lunchtime and had an afternoon session at the RAG including a lot of split work. That scrum machine was working overtime! Friday evening the team headed to a nearby pub for dinner and a (ONE) pint, which is all the head coach would allow. Safe to say it was early bedtime for most after having checked into the hotel.

Saturday morning training maybe started slightly later than planned (players desperately needed that fry up), but there was still plenty of time for team run. Some nerves started to show – after all this would be the first game since last year, not to mention some people’s first game ever! In the afternoon it was time for Captains’ run before taking to the stands, cheering for Richmond’s men’s team.

As it approached the kick off time 6 pm, rain started to drizzle. Captain Devine won the coin toss and chose to kick off, hoping those first hits on the home team would set the standard for the rest of the game. In less than perfect conditions, Uppsala attacked with good structure and were at times looking pretty fine if we may say so. There’s no disguising that the teams were unevenly matched, but the touring coaches were more than happy with the composure and tactics on the park, not to mention the attitude and grit shown by the players.

The constant rain brought with it a fair amount of handling errors and Uppsala didn’t manage to use space on the wings as much as they should’ve. Despite holding up two of Richmond’s tries the points against them on the scoreboard accumulated substantially. By the end of the game, the home supporters had turned to cheering for Uppsala and the (very small) crowd erupted in roars of joy when the blue team eventually got the ball over the try line. A bundle of at least 6 players from both teams mauled over the line and came crashing down. From within the pile of people, the arm of no 7 Lauren Davies stretched out like Inspector Gadget to bag 5 points for Uppsala.

Needless to say, the celebration of both the try, the several debutants, and the hitherto very successful tour reached unexpected heights. Admittedly, Sunday touristing was more conquering cravings and less Tower Bridge, but that’s another story!

TOUR TEAM LINE UP

1. Hanna Ingvarsson

2. Elina Brode

3. Victoria Galvan (debut)

4. Iona McLachlan

5. Lo Odelius (debut)

6. Amy Valdivia Vela (VC)

7. Lauren Davies

8. Josefin Devine (C)

9. Dani Sakai Ellis

10. Isolde Limé

11. Matilda Stein Åslund (debut)