New College’s own flamboyantly-coloured intramural rugby
squad, WINGS RFC (Woodsworth-Innis-New Graduate Studies Rugby Football
Club), finished their rollercoaster of a season with overall positive
results, despite not winning the final championship. Their regular
season record was an encouraging 3-2, including a record-breaking 49-0
blowout against this year’s basement team, Meds-Vic. In the
playoffs, held on the Scarborough pitch for the most part
because of the horrific condition of back campus by the time November
came around, they won a convincing victory against the Mississauga side in the quarter-finals,
only to be soundly and fairly defeated in a hard-fought match against
the eventual champions, Skule Rugby.
Intramural rugby 2006 was a season marked by
upsets and what sometimes seemed like indeterminate length. A number of
games were cancelled due to circumstances as diverse as bad field
conditions, scheduling conflicts, and in one case a missing set of post
pads, eventually replaced by starting members of WINGS’ own back
line.
As the season wore on longer and longer, the
weather became colder and colder, and the field became wetter and
slipperier, one member of the WINGS squad remarked that playing the
season was starting to feel like World War I: “We’re going
off to fight people simply because they’re on another side, and
we’re sickened by all the time spent sucking mud in the numbing
cold, with no end in sight.” The inappropriateness and gross
exaggeration of this comment was amplified by the fact that it was
uttered on Remembrance Day.
Nevertheless, although wingers were slowed to
a crawl and the lack of consistent grass made contested scrums damned
near impossible even for experienced forwards, the WINGS season was
roundly considered to be a successful one on all fronts. Special thanks
must go out to coach James Wasmuth for all
his yelling and blood-pressure issues, to team captain and
administrative organizer Sean Fitzpatrick for the ridiculous amount of
time he has to spend with email, and of course to all the dedicated
players who came out to sicken and wreck themselves in the freezing
rain week after week, encouraging everyone else to persevere just that
much longer. We all know that the big victory is coming some season
soon for what was once the orphaned cousin of U of T intramurals and
now stands as the reigning powerhouse of Arts & Science rugby.
