15.01.13

The Rugby Team Principle — Illustrated Edition

Posted in Blogroll, Random Thoughts, Rugby at 5:06 pm by Liv

I wrote a while back about the rugby team principle and recently I stumbled on YouTube on this clip — which more than exemplifies what I was trying to convey. Please bear with the crappy quality of it!

It depicts the last few minutes of Harlequins against Stade Français in the European cup — The Quins start with one point down, so any kind of score will win them the game (remember a drop goal is 3 points, a penalty kick is 3 points, try is 5 points). The trouble is they only have 1 minute and about 30 seconds to do this and the ball is with Stade Français! Again, remember that in rugby the clock doesn’t stop like in NFL and once the 80 minutes have been reached the first infringement ends the game — be it forward pass, knock-ons (which means dropping the ball forward), foul play or the ball going into touch; obviously all the oposition has to do once the 80 minutes are reaches is to kick the ball into touch — game over and well done Stade Français!

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments

Disclaimer

14.11.12

“Proper” Rugby Ball

Posted in Blogroll, Fun Time, News, Photos, Romania, Rugby at 11:27 pm by Liv

As you probably know from my previous posts, I keep a (rather hopeful) eye on the evolution of Romanian Rugby. And after a couple of years of looking around, I got this awesome present (thanks, sis!) — an official Romanian Rugby Federation, matchday ball:

All I have to do no is to put my name down for a trial for The Oaks

Permalink 1 Comment

Disclaimer

21.10.12

The Rugby Team Principle

Posted in Blogroll, Random Thoughts, Rugby, Tech at 9:08 pm by Liv

I guess I’m no rugby expert but I am an avid fan — those of you who know me can probably testify for that. My passion for the sport goes to the point of considering rugby the ultimate sport – as I believe it has a bit of every other sport in it – and as such there is a lot to learn from this beautiful sport. And being the ultimate sport I think rugby is, it can teach us things that can be applied in many aspects of life, work, universe and everything.

With that in mind, I’m going to have a look at my learnings from rugby in terms of building a team — a team you can send on the pitch to win a game, not just provide cannon fodder for the opposition. As I said, I don’t claim to be an expert in rugby, but I have learned a lot about it throughout my years – partly by sitting in front of the TV and watching it, by reading about it, and most importantly by playing it and being involved in an amateur rugby team. That bit in itself proved to be an awesome experience – and while my team mates are probably still laughing about my (historical by now) offside against Stanford, and many other (funny) mishaps of mine, they have taught me a lot – about rugby, about strategy, about team play. Hence my rant here about this.

NOTE: Before you go into this post, I have to point out that I have discovered this by sheer luck — it’s one of the posts that I have written ages ago on the London Underground, on my BlackBerry. And only found out now, upgrading the WordPress app on my phone, that this was saved as a draft there and never published. This proves on one hand how old my phone is and also, be warned, it does mean that it is probably a bit out of date in terms of references to rugby teams it makes. I remember at the time I wrote this, RWC 2011 was in full swing and also I remember that this made a very interesting observation exercise for watching and learning how a team works together. I still believe some of these rules apply to any team out there and the overall message should still be valid..

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments

Disclaimer

19.09.11

Brief (but accurate!) history of Romanian rugby jerseys

Posted in Blogroll, Photos, Random Thoughts, Romania, Rugby at 4:46 pm by Liv

Just occurred to me the other day — being the (arguably) lucky owner of 3 Romanian rugby jerseys — how much these things have changed since the last Rugby World Cup (that would be RWC 2007 for those of you who don’t remember these things:D): I have bought the first such jersey during RWC 2007 as The Oaks were in it (as usual, with very low chances of making it out of the group, let alone semi-finals). It looked like this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Permalink Comments

Disclaimer

07.09.11

And So It Begins: RWC 2011 Sweepstakes in Cognitive Match

Posted in Blogroll, Fun Time, News, Rugby at 5:19 pm by Liv

Not only did I have the dilemma already of cheering for both Romania and England, now I ended up with cheering for France as well following the sweepstakes draw for RWC 2011 we did in Cognitive Match

Permalink Comments

Disclaimer