Delayed

Frodo: You’re late.
Gandalf: A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.
…
Frodo: What happened, Gandalf? Why didn’t you meet us?
Gandalf: I was…delayed.

My apologies, dedicated blog readers and followers, for my negligence of this blog for the past 2 weeks. Although I wasn’t trapped in Isengard fighting evil adversaries, I have been quite busy living, learning, and breathing rugby. The internet and power outages haven’t helped either, but I can’t blame them – I’ve dropped the ball. It’s harder for me to write comprehensive blog posts than to post a few small updates here and there so as a reminder,

• Here’s our daily academy schedule that I update at least every 2 days
• My Facebook, which has a good stream and collection of photo highlights
• Twitter and Instagram

I’ve been updating each of these more frequently than this blog, especially the “Maties Dailies” page. On the daily schedule spreadsheet I also threw together a list of reffing gigs we’ve had in the past 3 weeks. For me, I’ve officiated 32 match-ups (since they’re not full 80 minute games) in 3 weeks! WOW!!!!! SA has an AMAZING rugby culture.

Since it’s getting pretty late tonight and I have to be awake in less than 8 hours for a morning stadium stairs (“trappe” in Afrikaans) fitness session, I’ll keep it short, but I promise to update more often for the rest of my South African adventure! Perhaps I’ll stick to highlights instead of comprehensive recollections about every single day? Here’s a quick preview:

Week 2 highlights:

• Went to Cape Town, visited the Springbok Museum!
• On-field vision session
• Ran Bergpad (4k mountain trail) in under 20 minutes
• Got a record (among the 5 of us academy refs) on the Micro machine in Vision Lab!
• Fantastic time reffing youth tournament in Durbanville and chatting with the kids
• HYPE FOR SATURDAY

Week 3 highlights:

• 3 day U15s Tournament with best teams in the country
• Reffed 1^st club game in Western Province
• Went to the beach
• A lot of improvement in long term shoulder injury (AC joint)
• Collected TONS of data!!! (Film, audio, feedback)
• AR’d SA U20 Junior World Cup team trials
• TV, Rainbows, New friends
• It’s been 1 year as of Sunday April 6^th since my very first game as a referee!!

More details to come soon so stay tuned! Here are a few pictures that add a little more flavor to SA than my typical photo of a beautiful pitch and beautiful weather :)

The boys on a sunny afternoon of trials. Clockwise from top left: Kahlil, Geoff, Ryan, Evan

My third Sunday: our house from the back yard (where I foam roll by the pool), a typical lunch at the local school, and a scene from the Eikestad mall.

Interesting “& Or” juice labels and anti-chugging double cap straw contraption.