What an epic tournament!
Let’s set the scene. A 20 strong squad, most of us never having played a game of touch rugby before in their lives. A quick trip to Sports Direct for quality rugby boots. Two ‘training’ sessions, yes two! One ‘how to play touch rugby’ YouTube video later and we’d arrived in Belgium.
We stepped off the tour bus to a flurry of TotalEnergies paps and the Black-Eyed Peas ‘I gotta feeling’ belting out (hands up who’s just sung Woo hoo at this point) and it was game on.
Top row: Rob Lay, Harry Wright, Kenny Hallett, Matthew Chapman, Sarah Sheen, Sam Boughton, Jillie Odedra, Melanie Pick, Alfie Williams, Ben Spry.
Bottom/middle row: Reece Johnson, Luca Federico, Sam Posner, Sander Kostar, Lauren Terry, Rebecca Hills, Ban Langmead, Jennifer Arnold, Rebecca Smith.
We had a quick strategy meeting in the sports bar, then it was on to the first night’s shindig… Represent your country night. After a variety of fancy dress ideas were knocked about pre-tournament, we decided on The Peaky Blinders and so all donned our waistcoats and flat caps and off we went, not really knowing what to expect. Maybe something low key on the first night? We didn’t expect to step into the 1990s Hacienda! 400 TotalEnergies employees, all representing. There was a ‘chip’ presentation, chip limbo, classic tunes from the DJ, and some questionable dancing well into the early hours, and it was almost as if we all forgot we were there for a touch rugby tournament…the 6:30am alarm soon sorted that out.