Sub-10/12 Treviso Tour 2015

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Sub-10/12 Treviso Rugby Tour 2015

Tour report by Simon Mount

The darkest of dark clouds of the TAP pilots’ strike having finally lifted, the Sub-10/12 Treviso Tour got underway on the second Friday in May and was blessed with four gloriously sunny early summer days. For the lucky players, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, coaches, matrons and managers, the 2015 version was as intense, colourful, fiercely competitive, vibrant, passionate and wonderfully Italian as ever.

The airport farewell, however, was a strangely muted affair, with far more dry maternal eyes than is normally the case, perhaps as it was played out against the back-drop of flight cancellations and the very real possibility that we would all be seeing each other again within a couple of hours or so. As it turned out, all those fervent prayers and candle-lit incantations had worked their wonders, as Sr Luís Lara became the most popular rebel commander since Giuseppe Garibaldi, as first he broke the strike, then got us airborne and eventually safely grounded at Venice airport, to the regulation, but on this occasion entirely warranted, rapturous round of applause.

The travel gods had clearly been more than just appeased, as the waiting bus ferried us swiftly to our hotel in Treviso, where we were warmly greeted by the familiar faces on the staff, who betrayed only a slight hint of trepidation over the impending challenges posed by the arrival of so many young guests with so much surplus energy. A quick bite to eat and a stroll round to the gloriously lush Rugby pitches at La Ghirada enabled us to have a run-around and get the journey out of the system, as well as providing the coaches with an opportunity for some last minute fine-tuning.

As the opening day of Trofeo Topolino dawned, our superb matrons performed the first of their many minor miracles in getting both squads up, changed and down to breakfast in good time to wolf down some fuel, hear the coaches deliver their final battle cries and then join in the procession of Italian Rugby players converging on La Ghirada. As the teams arrived at the ground they were greeted by a cacophony of sound and a kaleidoscope of colours - produced by the assembly of over 4,000 players from all over Italy and beyond. As minds were being focused and sinews stiffened for the challenges ahead, the travelling parents, under the direction of our indefatigable Master of Ceremonies, Danilo Ballotta, swung into action to create a uniquely international hospitality tent, replete with the flags of the 15 nations that we were proudly representing, together with a mouth-watering array of mainly Iberian culinary delights and tempting libations, all provided most generously by the Treviso Parents prior to our departure. Other parents were seconded to set up the all-important player sustenance supply lines - much needed to refill the tanks on a day of non-stop action and soaring temperatures.

The group stage games on the Saturday morning determine the levels for the remainder of the tournament, and so bright starts are essential for all ambitious teams. Hopes and dreams of conquering the heights ran deepest in the hearts and minds of our super-tough and uber-united Sub-10 squad, but incredibly they had drawn last year’s winners as their first opponents. They inevitably fought like demons, and could well have snatched it, but went down in the end to a solitary try. Bouncing back from this early setback to record a further two impressive wins, they then stumbled against the eventual winners of the competition to finish their “group of death” in third place. Although this limited their scope for a high final classification, it did ensure that they were up against relatively lowly opposition for the rest of the tournament, who they proceeded to dispatch with ruthless efficiency, finishing in 34th place (out of 80 teams). This was a team in the true sense of the word, brothers-in-arms with everyone playing for each other - a great credit to their own character and the fine work of their coaches, Geordie McSullea and Nick Coutts.The Sub-10s tackled like lions and ran like the wind, and it was often a pure joy to watch them go about their business. True heroes, one and all, but none more so than Giacomo Luraschi, who returned from a visit to hospital to pull off a match-winning tackle in the dying moments of one of his team’s most closely fought encounters.

The Sub-12s confounded many qualified expectations by hitting the ground not just running but sprinting, and so secured two great wins and a draw from the first four games, to finish their group in a highly creditable 2nd place. This ensured a higher classification than the Sub-10s, but also guaranteed that a series of tough games lay ahead. Unlike in previous seasons, the Sub-12 team kept fighting till the end in all of their matches, picking up good wins throughout the weekend and never losing by more than a single score or two. Their spirit was kindled with unstinting care and passion by coaches Lorne King and Jan de Pooter. The innovation of the colour-coded shorts, awarded after each game to the best player and best tackler, was a masterstroke of player motivation, and it was great to see a team that never said die, even when under the heaviest of coshes. The scarcely believable tackles pulled off by Jens de Pooter and Afonso Soares de Primo, against a Farnese player resembling a giant orc on steroids, defied the Laws of Physics and exemplified this spirit, inspiring the troops to still greater efforts. To finish the tournament ranked 24th out of 80 teams showed how well this unfancied team had performed.

Once the serious business had concluded on Sunday lunchtime, we restaged the annual all-in mixed sub-10/12 game against our friends from Milano. Here some creative refereeing and the entry of coaches and parents onto the Milano side made for another highly entertaining and, at times, side-splitting experience. This was the fun icing on the cake of a magnificent weekend of Rugby for our young players.

We then headed to the Benetton Treviso Stadium to watch the finals being played out in front of a packed stand, and afterwards to mingle with the home team pros. Autograph-hunting and selfie-staging with the stars became the increasingly frantic order of the day, and reached a peak when Samy and Leo Djavidnia tracked down the Italian Rugby legend, Mauro Bergamasco, for a once-in-a-lifetime momento. The youngsters from all clubs became completely carried away at this stage, to the extent that many started to mob just about anyone who looked vaguely like a Rugby player, including our very own legend-in-his-own-lunch-time - the shameless imposter, Geordie McSullea. Although this was almost entirely down to his carefully cultivated caveman look, his evident satisfaction at being mistaken for a celebrity was there for all to see.

Back at the hotel there was much rejoicing when a relaxing of the Spartan bed-time regime was announced and a succession of exotic pizzas were brought in to the end of tour dinner. This was also an opportunity for Sebastião Bowden to perfect his public-speaking skills, before one of the tour managers took the stage to give out Topolino certificates to all the players, and individual awards for their overall contribution to the success of the tour to the following: Best Touring Parent (Fernando Soares de Primo); Best Touring Grandparents (Gabriele and Nadia Luraschi); Best Master of Ceremonies (Danilo Ballotta); Best Touring Sub-10 Player (Jon Olalde) and Best Touring Sub-12 Player (Diogo Alves). Thereafter, mass hair letting-down ensued, and blind eyes were collectively turned, as traditional Rugby Tour behaviour rumbled on until late into the night.

Eschewing the canals of Venice, the Monday surprise activity involved an epic canoeing expedition along the Fiume Sile through the Venetian countryside, followed by a walk through the delightfully tranquil water meadows of a local nature reserve. A somewhat incongruous end to an action-packed tour seemed to be gently unfolding, until another blessed outbreak of childish madness took hold, with a series of increasingly daredevil ditch-jumping stunts, each performed to eerily atavistic chants.  

With our comrades at SPAC deciding to keep their powder dry to fight another day, the return journey to Lisbon was almost completely stress-free, as another group of extremely fortunate children returned home from Treviso - exhausted but jubilant, full of priceless memories and all at least a centimetre taller.

Many thanks are due to our sponsors for helping to subsidise the costs of the tour, to Samy Djavidnia for organising things with Zen-like calm, to Bernardo Mendes at Wide Travel for also keeping his nerve in the most trying of circumstances, to our wonderful coaches and matrons, to the parents on tour, who all showed extraordinary generosity of spirit, and to those back home who lent us their children and were left behind to follow events from afar.