End-of-Season Team Meeting, 7 June 2001
Meeting Minutes

The chosen venue and gathering place was the Firehouse Grill in Fairfax. After getting food and drinks, we proceeded upstairs to the luxurious Firehouse Red Room. (It really doesn't have that name, I just call it that to give the place more tone.) We then posed for the Fairfax Reds group shot for the Guinness Guy; since it's us in red jerseys against a red wall it looks rather hellish. Archie almost entirely disappears against the wall.

1. Arrangements have been made for the party to be held at the field. Beer is being sponsored by Bardo's Microbrewery (thanks Mike Kramer). Food is being catered by "Hog-n-Claw Catering." The menu will include barbecue, pasta salad, baked beans, rolls, and all the fixins. We will also be providing sodas and water at the party. 2. The Nova Women's Ruggerfest folks will be joining us for the evening's activities. 3. Nels is trying to arrange for one or two live bands to play in the afternoon and through the party. 4. We still need folks to beg for old t-shirts to be used as "jerseys." These can be old trade show or even tee-shirts, or leftover dot-com corporate shirts... we don't care. 5. Field set-up and tournament operation will require EVERYONE's participation. This is a fund raiser for the club and it will require the whole club in order to be successful. Make plans to be there, whether you can play or not! There will be more updates to come.

Then it's over to Archie, who announced that he's departing for Salt Lake City just after Boo Daddy's with NBC to cover the 2002 Olympics. Archie: thanks for serving the club so well as vice-president - you will be missed. (And to my e-mail readers, this was the special announcement I mentioned. He didn't want me to broadcast it ahead of the meeting.) A vacancy having been thus created in the officer ranks of the club, Lumberjack presided over an election to fill the position. ("Presided" in the context of a WSRFC Team Meeting means he had to yell louder than everyone else - especially as the effects of beer drinking began.) Two candidates were identified, Pete "Trip" Tripi and Mike "Kosmo" Kramer. After some noise a vote was taken and Kosmo emerged as the new vice-president, to take office after Archie flees town ahead of his creditors. It is well to recall what they normally mention in the Miss America Pageant: if for some reason the president steps down or cannot fulfill his duties, the vice-president steps up. It has happened twice in the past few years.

We then moved on to Elvis' account of plans for upcoming sevens tournaments. The Vegas Midnight 7's is out due to a lack of interest. Severn River 7's, Cape Fear 7's, Boo Daddy's 7's and Slug 7's are all on the schedule. Kermit mentioned that if you have any interest to go to the Cape Fear 7's, get in touch with him NOW.

At some point I mentioned the following: 1) the commemorative and reds individual jerseys have yet to be delivered to me, and we're still waiting on the shorts and kit bags, too. After ten or eleven weeks it's a pretty unsatisfactory situation, but there it is. 2) I will be contacting the Guinness Guy again in mid July, as he suggested, for a fall donation. Keep your fingers crossed, okay? 3) Trip's pal Rudy Archer has been doing a bang-up job of capturing us at play on camera - his photos can be viewed from the gallery page of the website. 4) I have dropped the idea of selling the domain name "rugbyfootball.com" since so many of you remark what a great identifier it is. Of course, should somebody offer us a cool million we might change our minds.

But have you ever seen the 1981 John Boorman film Excalibur? At one point in the film, after King Arthur's first great victory, Merlin the Magician appears in the middle of a great circle of knights and dramatically brandishes a flaming staff. Amid the hushed men, he reminds the knights that this is a moment to remember always, when they are united in purpose and sealed by the bonds of brotherhood, and to not let those bonds dissolve. Of course, being Merlin and a seer, he knows they will be - but his purpose is to instill in the men a sense of occasion and a sense of themselves. Gentlemen, a rugby club business meeting is kind of like that. Outwardly, it is a noisy meeting where dreary business details are haggled over. Sometimes tempers flare. But you are young; my advice is to treasure your vibrant times, all of them: practice, matches, socials and meetings. Because of my late start in rugby, perhaps I see Merlin's point better than most.

You can view images from this meeting by clicking here.