I am a hooker.

I had my first rugby match yesterday in a town just north of Goteborg. I've been practicing for a little over a month now but still have just scratched the surface as to the rules and how-to of the game. I just know that as of last week, I'm a hooker for the Malmo rugby team. I'm guessing the position gets its name from our job in the scrum (big bunch of people pushing on eachother and trying get the ball to their side of the mob) My job is to hook the ball with my foot as soon as it is rolled in and pull it back behind us while holding the other team's hooker at bay. It's not easy and I can't say I'm a great hooker but I'm learning.

The tournament was better than I imagined. I had really forgotten how good it feels to compete in sports. The blood and adrenaline pumping. I must admit, I was shaking in my shoes during the 3 1/2 hour drive north but after watching the first game, I felt a bit more relaxed and when it was my turn, I was ready. Again, I can't say that I played great or even very good but for my first time out, I did have one or two nice tackles. In the end, we won one game and lost 2 but I'm pretty happy with the way things went. Since a lot of the girls on our team are new we did a fairly good job of holding the other, more experienced teams back. In fact, we lost the second game by a goal just before the final whistle. (I'm usually not one to say, 'well, we almost won...that's pretty good!' when talking about sports. Even playing softball in high school, i knew our team was at the bottom of the league but it still made me angry everytime we lost...the closer the score, the more frustrated I was and I couldn't understand the people who weren't bothered. But in this case I think we did a good job and I can be satisfied...next time we'll win.

Here are just a few pictures of the day. It looks like i took a lot of photos of butts but I was just trying to get a good picture of a scrum...the ref kept getting in my way.

In the below picture, I'm pretty sure I'm the girl jumping over (or stepping on) the girl on the ground in the middle of the picture! See here for a grainy closeup!