U16s Canada Tour Day One
The boy with the burning boots!

Friday 16th July 2004

THE BOY WITH THE BURNING BOOTS

Groundhog Day all over again! We have toured to places like Minehead, Burnham-on Sea and Edinburgh. We’d probably all forgotten about the Men in Black on a Bus Tour to Holland last Easter, but here we were again – same place, same people, same purpose. We drew out of Braywick Park, to the now traditional cries of “Are we there yet, Dad?” First point of concern came when the coach-driver turned onto the M4, and headed off towards Canada! However he made the good point that roadworks on the M25 had led him to take a detour.

First Award of the tour was presented to Alex “Dodgy Geezer” Cannon – 101 interesting things a Boy can do with a drinks mat. After a trip to WH Smith at Gatwick, the Second Award sponsored by FHM was made to those people we most wanted to have on the tour – Rachel Stephens, Carmen Electra and Ben Tucker – all good front row players.

Having left Maidenhead at 6.00am, we didn’t arrive at our Toronto base until 6.30pm Toronto time, having travelled for seventeen and a half hours. The journey was uneventful thanks to Air Transat, save for a distressing incident in Immigration. As the party was filing past the Welcome to Canada signs, several boys were asked to show their boots to the Food Immigration Inspectors. To the party’s dismay Jack “El Scrumpo” Robinson was detained. His anxious father was summoned to The Food Immigration Office, fearing sheep worrying offences. It was with some relief that he was told that his son’s muddy boots had failed a hygiene inspection, and were to be confiscated and burned.

The party then shook out at its base at Days Hotel and Conference Centre in Downtown Toronto. The tour committee then arranged an early supper, advising how to deal with the real issue of jet lag, with the first game around 24 hours later against Brampton Juniors.

DAY TWO

DAVE HODGSON TO SKIPPER MAIDENHEAD V BRAMPTON JUNIORS

With the party waking up at different hours, we all trooped into breakfast at 9.30, followed by a team meeting at 10.15 led by the cut price Welsh Wizard himself - Stephen Jones. “Why have Sir Clive Woodward at £300,000 pa, when you can have Steve for nothing?” Steve then led the party through what is to become its daily routine team meeting, before announcing the side to play Brampton.

Pat McSweeney, Jack Robinson, Charlie Hancock, Chris Parrott, Joe Thomas (vc) Drew Jones, Mitch Batten, Luke Knowles, Olly Styles, Dayne Ferrar, Alex Cannon, Dave Hodgson (c) Ryan Christian, Chris Richardson, Sam Stefan.

Substitutes: Ashley Hanks, Tom Morgan, Tom Plumer, Chris Adam, Anthony Lewis, Andrew Hogan

Injured: Elliot Hawkes, Tom Lewis, Tim Johnson.

Sam Stefan is half-Canadian (Which half, Nicky?) and will be watched tonight by his grandmother and grandfather, and uncle.

A practice then took place at The University, with stretching and running through our moves, and also teasing out those aches and pains from the previous day’s journey under the watchful eye of Ralph Murwill the physiotherapist. The party trooped back to the Hotel for lunch and relaxation before the night’s game.