Tournament Lucerne 13.09.2020
The tournament took place in beautiful weather close to the foot of Pilatus (local mountain and famous travel destination). Once more Zurich Rugby Academy teamed up with Basel, Würenlos and Winterthur in order to have enough players for a team – the Northern Lions 20/21.
Game 1 against Lugano (reinforced by 3 players from the Northern Lions) was a balanced game which ended with a score of 10:10.
While game 1 was a match between 2 equally strong teams, the second match against Zug Lucerne 1 was not as balanced. The final score was 55:00 for Zug Lucerne 1. The opponent team was superior in almost all terms and it was obvious that our players are not familiar with their positions, not used to play as a team of 13 players and that they do not know each other very well. This is for sure caused by the fact that it is not possible to exercise positions in training if the training group is too small. Dear William Webb Ellis - we have understood - thank you for your message.
However, the break after match 2 was well used by the coaches to motivate our players. The Northern Lions showed a much better performance against Zug Lucerne 2 compared to the match before. There were very good tackles as well as further good actions and runs and there was an amazing try by Danish Dynamite. Even if this game was lost by 5:30, the Northern Lions of course did not show any sign of frustration. After this game, coaches and the captain found motivating words to keep motivation of the players on a high level for future tournaments together.
Finally, each player and each coach got a sausage (Cervelat or Bratwurst) with bread and a beverage for free from RC Lucerne.
Many thanks to RC Lucerne for the good organisation of the tournament, the coaches (Leo and Dominik from ZRA, Sam and Altair from Basel, … from Würenlos, Fabio from Winterthur) for their hard work on the pitch and Cecilia for washing the shirts.
It was a day full of valuable conclusions for Northern Lions 20/21.
Adrian Dürig, 16.09.2020