Stirling touch
Season Review 2009
2009, what a year for Stirling Touch!!
The following is a summary of what we achieved during a fantastic season of Touch. Common themes throughout being fun and injuries!
Weekly Training
As it has done since we first began, regular training continued at the end of March at Bridgehaugh on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Over the course of the season we saw really encouraging numbers of new players coming along, and welcomed back a few familiar faces. Coaching became more structured and rewarding thanks to the work put in by Stuart, Gregor and Colin who managed to cater for all levels and maintain the good fun alongside serious training.
Referee Development
Early in the year the STA held a Level 1 Referee course at our home ground where a large number of our players were initiated in the ways of the referee. We had four club members become fully qualified, Phil and Paul gaining level 1 badges and Stuart and Lewis with level 2. This takes us up to six qualified refs.
Stirling Tournament
The third annual Stirling Open tournament took place on 6th June. This year the Men's division was dropped in favour of a larger Mixed division. We attracted the largest number of entrants to any Scottish tournament, with 20 teams taking part. The new format of tournament proved a huge success with some exciting and closely fought matches. Overall winners were an overjoyed Spiders, our friends from Glasgow hailing this as the pinnacle of their careers! Our own Wallace Monumentals claimed first silverware for a home side with the Shield, an outstanding result given the opposition we faced. Flossie Posse were mainly new players this time and they also did incredibly well, reaching the Plate play-off. As for the evening, well the combination of camping, tournament and celidh all at same venue again proved a winner. Much drinking and dancing and campsite parties rounded off a fantastic day which Stirling Touch can be very proud of hosting.
Scottish Touch Series
This year saw the creation of the Wallace Monumentals, a new team made up of the more experienced Stirling Touch players which would represent at the four Scottish Touch Series events. The series is played across the four key tournaments with points awarded for placing in each, the team with most points being declared STS Champions. Scoring well in each of the events, Wallace Monumentals finished a fantastic 4th out of the 40 sides who competed.
First event was our home tournament where we kicked off our good scoring with a 5th place finish. On 27th June we took the team to the Glasgow Open, where in a slightly smaller field we narrowly lost the Cup lay-off to our hosts, giving us an excellent 3rd place finish.
Next up was Aberdeen on 18th July, but at this stage of the season we were beginning to struggle with injuries to key players. A hard working group managed 8th place, with things so bad we were unable to field a full team in our final game of the day.
The final event in the series was Edinburgh Open on 12th September, again suffering with injuries we drafted in help from Glasgow Lions, Ruben and Ruth. The team played really well in a tough tournament and we were delighted to claim more silverware with the Plate and a 9th place finish.
Competing in each of these events has given more of our players exposure to top level Touch, aided our development and raised our reputation as a top side in Scottish Touch.
CONTINUE....
Gallery
