Gunfighter: A Modern Warrior's Life

The New York Yankees - World Champions

I don't suppose there is anything else to say.

Well, I could say:  "Welcome back to Yankee nation!", but that might seem like gloating.

I suppose I could also say, with all respects to "The Scooter":  Holy Cow! 

What would really be rude would be if I said "suckit" Sox fans!   So I won't, but I'd like to! 

Congratulations, Yankees!  You have made this boy from northern New Jersey who grew up on Yankee baseball, very happy.

Suburban Haiku

Parents shout "Great try!"

Refs make many crappy calls

I'm a soccer dad

Rugby: The Game They Play In Heaven

****My friends, June is nearly upon us, which means it is time for not only the summer international rugby tours, but also this is a year the the British & Irish Lions will be touring South Africa!

Rugby heaven.

Since there may be some benighted souls who don't know the joys of rugby, I thought that I should re-post something that I wrote a few years ago, from my old blog.

Here, my friends, is an everview of "The Game They Play In Heaven"****

In many of my posts, I have made reference to the fact that I am a rugby fan and that I believe that compared to rugby all other sports pale in comparison. I have never discussed WHY I enjoy rugby as much as I do. So... With your kind indulgence, today's post will be about "The Game They Play In Heaven".

Most Americans never have any exposure to rugby, and those that do primarily see it as some sort of weird, not-quite-normal football game. I'd like to take a moment to dissect the game and make it make more sense to you.

To begin, let's take a little trip back in time to 1823, at a place called Rugby school, in Warwickshire, England.

Legend has it the during a soccer game (the Brits call it football) at the school, a student named William Webb-Ellis, picked up the ball and started running with it. This caused the other boys to chase him down and tackle him, and rugby football was born.

Basically the story is a myth, but what is true is that the game that later evolved into rugby began there. Lets see what has happened in the years since.

Soccer is the father of rugby, and rugby begat North American football, Gaelic football and Australian rules football, but I digress.

As the British Empire grew and grew, it's games went with it, which is why soccer is so popular the world over. Rugby is less popular because for so much of it's history, it was the game of the middle and upper classes. Rugby was (and to a much smaller degree today) a "gentleman's game" while soccer was the game of the working class. Indeed rugby didn't enter the professional era until just ten years ago!

In rugby, the game has two 40 minute halves, separated by a 20 minute halftime interval, that are played without timeouts except for injuries. The two teams on the field consist of 15 players, all of whom play offense as well as defense.

There are five different ways to score in rugby, and they are:

Try: A try is scored when a player moves the ball onto or across the goal line, touches the ball to the ground and applies downward pressure, with no part of the player's body is "In-Touch" (out of bounds). The try is where American football derives the term "touch-down". A try is worth 5 points.

Conversion: A conversion kick happens after a team scores a try. The kick is made 22 meters from the goal line, in a direct line from whatever part of the goal area the try was scored. So, if a try is scored at the goal line, but right near the sideline, the conversion kick will be made from 22 meters out, but on the sideline itself. As a result the kickers must be adept at kicking with either foot, often at an extreme oblique angle. A conversion is worth 2 points. So a "converted try" is worth 7 points, sound familiar?

Penalty kick: A penalty kick can be taken after a penalty, although the team that benefits from the penalty has the option of restarting play without kicking for the goal. The penalty kick will be taken from the point of the infraction. A penalty goal is worth 3 points.

Drop Goal: A drop goal can be made from anywhere, even while the ball is in play and being contested. The drop goal takes place when a player drops the ball to the ground and after the ball touches the ground, he (she) kicks the ball over and through the goal posts. A drop goal is worth 3 points. Drop goals are exciting, albeit rare.

Penalty Try: A penalty try can be awarded by a referee if a defender gives an intentional infraction which would certainly have prevented a try from being scored. Again, fairly rare. A Penalty try is also worth 5 points.

If this sounds confusing, don't sweat it... it is easy to figure it out while watching.

Another important facet of the game is that although players are allowed to pass the ball, the ball must be passed in a backward direction. That's right, no forward passing. Oh, and no blocking for the runner either... s/he will just have to use speed, finesse or raw power to avoid being tackled to the ground.

Should a team want to move the ball forward by air, that will have to be done by a kick. You can kick the ball forward to one of your own players, but the recieving player cannot be forward of the ball when it is kicked or that player is "offside".

Players on a rugby team are divided into Forwards and Backs, all of whom play on the field at the same time.

The Backs and Wingers are much like American football backs and recievers. These are usually the more slender speedster-types that run like the wind. The object is to get the ball to these guys to do some broken field running and to score tries. Some of the most notable Wingers in the world of international rubgy today are: Doug Howlett (NZ), Joe Rockocoko (NZ), and Bryan Habana (South Africa).

The Forwards tend to be built more like me. Heavier, stonger guys that are made for physical confrontation but are much less fleet-of-foot. These are the guys that are up front, battling for the ball in the scrum, ruck, and maul. Some of the most notable forwards in international rugby today are: Andrew Sheridan (England), Rodney "Rod-zilla" Blake (Australia), and Jacobus "Os" (Ox in english) DuRandt (South Africa).

The game begins with a kick-off, much like our game, but once it starts there is no timeout after a tackle.

Once a tackle is made, the tackled player must release the ball, and may not play the ball again until he is on his feet.

After a tackle the "ruck" is formed. This happens as the players from the team in possession form a shell over the tackled player so that they may pick up the ball and continue to advance. The opposition, at the same time, try to push and pull the other players away from the ruck, so that their team can contest for possession. Players may also use their feet to dig for the ball if it is being intentionally covered by the team in possession.

If a player has the ball and is tackled, but not taken to the ground, his own teammates can bind around him (hold him up) and continue to advance while the opposition may bind around the tackler and push back. This is called the "Maul".

The last thing I want to tell you about is the "Scrum". The scrum or scrummage takes place when play needs to be restarted for some reason. The forwards, on the signal from the referee, push back and forth as the scrum-half of the team in possession puts the ball into the scrum.

I know this sounds like a lot, and there is a lot, but to tell you the truth, rugby is much less complicated that our football, and more importantly, much more exciting, as the play is almost continuous.

If you are interested in seeing some good rugby on televison, you might want to try your local sattelite provider (I have Directtv) and see if they carry Setanta sports... this is an Irish sports channel that carries rugby from the UK, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as international competitions including the upcoming 2006 Women's Rugby World Cup, and 2007 Men's Rugby World Cup.

Rugby is a fast paced, hard hitting, exciting game that is free of grandstanding and showboating. Rugby is a game where teamwork is paramount, Rugby is a game where people that fail drug tests wind up out on their backside for two entire years for their first offense. Rugby isn't for the meek. It takes courage and strngth of character to play. Rugby is a game played by men as well as women. Rugby is a game of international competition. 

Rugby is passionate.  Rugby is infectious... and I love it.

Geez, this post is longer than I wanted it to be.

Cheers!

****This Is a link to the Official British & Irish Lion's site

A Father's Pride

I have no sons, you know that. 

As the father of daughters, I will never know the pride that cannot really be spoken of aloud, when my son gets in his first fistfight, and comes out on top.  I won't see a son excel at contact sports and take punishment and hand it out as I did as a boy, and later as a man.

I hope you won't think poorly of me when I tell you how proud I was this weekend that during her indoor game this weekend, Soccergirl knocked several other girls on their asses in a particularly physical game. 

I don't mean to suggest that my girly-girl daughter was out there being a brute, but she sure as hell gave better than she got.  She even earned herself a blue card.  In this league, at this age group, you can get a "blue card" which is a two minute penalty.  As good as I felt about her standing for her own, I kept it quiet, because the genteel folks in Fairfax County probably wouldn't have appreciated my exuberance. 

What was even better than the way I felt about it was the fact that her coach and her regular season head coach (both women) were both happier about it than I was.

As I always say: soccer is a contact sport, and we don't play powder puff!

The Problem With Coaching Youth Soccer

Two Saturdays back,  the regular Fall soccer season ended, with our team faring much better than we expected after the horrible beating we took in the first two games.  At the end of it all, we won half of our games and made a pretty fair go at all but the first two.  I suppose we can’t be too unhappy with those results, considering that so many of the girls had never played together, and that a couple of the players (their parents, really) had no notion of dedication or commitment. 

Anyway, on our last weekend of the season, we had the “Challenge League” festival, in which the teams were going to play a round robin-type tournament.  Our team did well, losing the first game, but winning the next two, leaving us in second place in our division.  The girls played well and were happy.

The next day… and I mean the very next day, the first game of the indoor winter league started.  While Mrs. Gunfighter took Soccergirl to her game, I got ready to go to church because I was teaching Sunday school.  Well, all that came to a halt when I remembered that Mrs. GF had my car keys in with her.  Damn.  Not her fault, but I wouldn’t have gotten there in time if I had decided to walk.  So I bagged it, and hoped my assistant made it all happen.

Our team was apparently shellacked by their opponents in our opening indoor game.  SG’s team was made up of several girls from her team and two other teams from our league.  They were all outdoor players, and I guess indoor soccer is an entirely different animal. 

So, Mrs GF and SG come home to get me, and we go out to lunch.  As soon as lunch is over, we headed to All-Star team practice, because we had a tournament the next weekend.  So we practiced…. And then left practice for the post-season party at the local pizzeria...

INTERMISSION:  If you are getting confused here, let me clarify.  We played with the fall outdoor team on Saturday, played with the winter indoor league Sunday morning, practiced with the fall outdoor All-Star team Sunday afternoon, and partied with fall outdoor in the late afternoon.  Clear?

So, at the pizza party, the girls were all looking at the photo albums that one of the team moms, who is an amateur photographer, put together for the team.  I didn’t realize that something was up, until one of the girls looked at me slyly, while shielding one of the albums as she walked past me.  Mrs Gunfighter told me to act surprised when the team gave me the album.  The parents were also kind enough to gift coach Patty and I with gift cards, Patty for her favorite Salon, and for me, a $50 Borders gift card (I suspect that Mrs GF told them what would make me happy!)

I wasn’t really surprised, I knew they were going to give me a gift… coaches always get a gift, but I still get just a little squishy when they do.  The little so-and-so's (and their parents) are engaging in emotional blackmail, here.  The much maligned coaches get no end of abuse from the parents in their never-ending quest of ensuring that their little pain in the ass kidangel is the next Mia Hamm; they try to coach from the sidelines; they tell their kids to do things that the coaches don’t want them to do; they miss practices; they show up for games 15 minutes late… leaving the coaches hoping like hell that the ref doesn’t realize that we are a player short, forcing a forfeit;  they bitch when their kid plays defense or in goal; because THEIR child MUST be the big scorer (even though said kid is too slow or is contact-averse).  They do this for ten weeks, and then, what?  They expect that all will be forgotten when the girls read a funny poem about the season?  They think that by the time that they give speeches of gratitude for Coach Patty and Coach GF, that we will get all emotional and start to think that it was all worthwhile, and that the coaches will do it again next season?  They think that after the girls give their coaches a big hug, that the coaches will be emotionally vulnerable and will therefore put up with all of this crap in the spring?

Well, bugger me senseless if me if they aren’t absolutely correct.

I love the little brutes.  I do, and I have already volunteered to coach in the new season.

Sigh!  I guess that I will have to rely on my job as the place that I exercise my tough-guy side.

I'm teaching a rifle class, this week… I get to play my emotionless killer role.  It’s my favorite.  So don't any of you tell the guys that I work with about any of what you just read, ok?

Team America

You know something?  My Kid's All-Star soccer team looks like America.

There are ten girls.  One girl is bi-racial: Persian and white, two girls are bi-racial: black and white, three girls are latina, one girl is Asian, and three girls are what most people would describe as white.

They are a good bunch of girls..... they work hard, and are tough athletes.

I'm very proud of them.

An Olympic Moment With Gunfighter

Greetings from St Simons Island Georgia.  It is a beautiful evening after a beautiful day.  We are seriously relaxing already, but I thought I would take a moment to share something with you.

Like many of you, I have been watching a lot of Olympic coverage since last Friday.  From the incredibly tedious opening to the games, to the on-camera freak-out of Bela Karoli when Nastia "Nasty Girl" Liukin and Shawn Johnson won the gold & silver in the All-Around gymnastic competition last night.

I have to tell you... I love the Olympics.  I really do, but I can't find it in my heart to love all of the sports in the Olympics.  One "sport" in particular really bugs me, and it's Beach Volleyball.

C'mon! Beach Volleyball?  An Olympic sport?

Really?

Look, You know that I'm no prude.  You know that I am as enamored of feminine pulchritude as any red-blooded, randy, American man... but I have to tell you:  I think that beach volleyball has no business in the Olympic games.

Sorry fans of the game..., but there it is.  I think that beach volleyball is frivolous and really stupid and certainly not serious enough to share broadcast dominance over the past week.

I don't fool myself as to why beach volleyball is not only included in the Olympic games, but featured so prominently in prime time.  It's this:

 

...and this:

 

...as well as this:

 

...and especially this:

Yes, I know that extremely fit young athletes are nice to look at.  Yes, I know that he Olympics has to make money and therefore sell advertising time, but come on.  Beach Volleyball?

Really?

I id a little research about this today, and I was disappointed to hear that the reason that some female beach volleyballers believe that the micro bikini is necessary in order to keep sand out of their suits.

Hm. 

Not being a chick, I hadn't thought about that.  It sounds reasonable... that is, until you take notice of the fact that male beach volleyballers don't wear Speedos for the same reason.

The IOC can do better than this.

When I am King, the following sports will be eliminated:

Figure skating
Ice Dancing
All Gymnastics
Bicycle Motocross
Equestrian
Beach Volleyball
Diving
Synchronized diving (again... be serious, please)
Synchronized Swimming
Snowboarding
Freestyle Skiing
Baseball
Softball
Ping Pong... Oh.  sorry.  I mean Table Tennis

AMENDMENTS:  Speedwalking, Badminton, and Trampoline will also be eliminated.

Sorry if any of your favorite sports are on the list... you'll have to console yourself with the fact that there will be at least one new medal sport taking their place:
'
Rugby. 

Yes, you heard me... when I am King, "The Game They Play in Heaven", will be a medal sport.

A medal sport in both summer AND winter games.

Any KOGFOC (Kingdom of Gunfighter Olympic Committee) member that doesn't comply, will be.... retired.  Retired with with extreme prejudice.

As I mentioned earlier, and as you saw yesterday, there will be quite a few guest posters here while I am gone, but I'll still be around from time to time on while I am away, but in the mean time, I have lot's of this:

To do.

GF

Pictures From the Past Year

I don't have a single bloody thing to talk about today... mainly because I am not in the mood to rant about the lowlife campaign that John McCain is running, which is as plain as the nose on your face.

Instead, I thought I would clean off the photo card that I have here, and share some pictures with you from the past year or so.  Enjoy:

 

The next President of The United States

How I feel about Republicans in general.

Some of my rosaries, for sale at The National Cathedral (They are all gone now, by the way).

The Washington Monument, and the Bureau of Engraving & Printing, seen from the tidal basin, next to the Jefferson Memorial.

Latest Ink

Pizza with leeks and roasted rep peppers.  Sooo good!

With my girls!

Are YOUtalkin' to ME?

Once again, The next President of the United States

'Nuff said!

A Work In Progress

Asian crusted salmon with stir-fry salad of jasmine rice.

Taylor Ham & Egg on a kaiser roll.  A delicacy for a boy from New Jersey.

Soccer Girl takes the throw-in!

Well now!  I hope I haven't bored you, too deeply.

I hope you all have a nice weekend.  We are off to Fredricksburg  to watch the opening of the Olympics (it's a family tradition, I'll explain it next week).

Big hugs and pink puffy hearts to all.

GF

PS:  In case any Hillary die-hards are reading this

Fantasy Sports?

Are you a sports fan?  Are your spouses/lifepartners sports fans?  Are your kids sports fans?  Well, if you are, you should have a look at this site: Family Family Sports.

I'm not into fantasy sports, but this place looks like it could be fun if fantasy sports are something that you enjoy.

It Is A Dark & Stormy Night...

...and I am alone with my thoughts.

Really.

As I sit here, at nearly midnight, I find myself being kept company by the sound of rain and rolling thunder.  I have been trying to collect my thoughts for an interview that I am going to conduct with a great blogger that I have discovered, but, at this late hour, the questions aren't forming.

Good thing for me, I have the random thoughts that come from a sleep-deprived Gunfighter's mind.  For example:

Is it just me. or is it wrong to just abandon your grocery cart, willy-nilly in the parking lot at  whatever store you happen to be shopping at?  Truthfully, those socially irresponsible people are probably cheating on their taxes, too.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that starting nine-year-olds on the path of "travel" soccer is just a bit much?  Truthfully, I find the concept of travel soccer exclusionary at the very least.  The best players in my county will NEVER be able to participate at the higher levels, because most of them have parents that can't really pony up $800 just for the registration fee.   It gets worse, what with all the parents living vicariously through their children etc.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that people who would vote for Johnny "Walnuts" McCain just because Obama beat Clinton for the nomination is some sort of f***ing idiot?  The only name that I can come up with for such people is... well....  you know.... REPUBLICANS!

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that it's time for a Gunfighter/DC Metro Moms & assorted bloggers Happy Hour REALLY soon?

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that spending the Father's Day weekend in the heat/rain... watching a certain child's (so-called) All Star team get the living shit kicked out of them, wasn't lots of fun?

I had to move out of  my office today.  A guy who was two grades higher than me joined the unit.  I have a cubicle now.  I'm not irritated about having to move... seniority happens, but having to move all of my stuff into a much smaller place was a real pain in the ass.  The upside is that I was able to get rid of a LOT of stuff that had just been taking up space.

The aforementioned unit (that I have run for a long time), has been absorbed into the national headquarters... Thats why I lost my office... there are guys more senior to me.

I think that's all I have tonight, friends.  I'm getting a little sleepy.

Gute Nacht

GF