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I´m writing this in English as we have a number of readers who don´t speak much Swedish. Exiles decided about a year ago that they would try to take both their men´s teams to Singapore, primarily to play in the Sevens organised by the Singapore Cricket Club (SCC), the second oldest tournament in the world (after Melrose). In addition, we planned to play a couple of XV-a-side games, one for each of our teams. This is the tournament where Anders Svärd on his own initiative and with some success took a number of Swedish Viking teams over the years. He was in charge of this trip as well and spent much time corresponding about the details. The SCC was not too impressive when it came to organising the XV-a.side games, their resources probably all concentrating upon the Sevens. Finally, two matches were organised, one against the Bucks and one against St Andrews, although unclear what standard they would both offer. Last Tuesday we started off against Bucks, without their players taking part in the Sevens. We started off with our best team but were 34 – 0 up after 20 minutes. We replaced them with mainly our second team, but still ended up winning 88 – 0. The day after we played against St Andrews, also without players in the Sevens for the Singapore Development Team. This time we started with our second team and ended the first half at 12 – 12. We then brought on our heavies, expecting to pull away. We dominated for long periods, but sterling defence resulted in only one try and a 17 – 12 victory. Thanks to the two clubs for turning out at short notice after SCC didn´t rise to the occasion. We enjoyed the games and more or less all our 30 players were on the field at one time or another. When we were here in 1992 we won both our games quite comfortably against SCC and Bucks so we are still unbeaten here 1992 – 2025.
On then to the Sevens tournament where our preparations were rather rudimentary. We had hoped to have a few guest players but when push came to shove we only had Axel Quarnström on board. A good man to have in the team and I think he enjoyed the trip.
There were 16 teams in a 4 x 4 format and Exiles started off against three teams who finished 2, 5 and 10 in the final rankings. We lost to all three, but were never outclassed and managed to at least score 5 tries. We started pretty poorly but got better as the tournament progressed. This meant we started in placings 9 – 12 on day two, but lost again to a good team from Kuala Lumpur, although beginning to show some sevens skills. This brought us down to the bottom four along with an Australian team and two Japanese teams. And then we started to show what we could do. In a hard-fought game we managed to beat the Ozzies 17 – 12 and in the final for the Jug Trophy we cut loose and demolished one of the Japanese teams 40 – 12. So it was a happy squad that headed for the airport and arrived in Stockholm early this morning, when some headed for work at 9 a.m. We ended 13th and with a bit better preparation could probably have ended up 8th to 10th. The top four teams with plenty of islanders were near international class, but the remaining 12 teams were not too far apart in standard.
We had three of our outstanding 18 year olds on the trip and one of them, Jordie Hall , scored 4 of our 15 tries. We have about 50 boys in our U16 – U18 groups and they will be coming through to senior level in the next few years.
Singapore is a wonderful place to visit and I think our squad enjoyed both the rugby and the tourism. Allan Mabon, the club long-term chairman, is already planning the next overseas outing.
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