Cosmos v The Baltics

Blimey. I've never been on a rugby tour before. My club, Kilburn Cosmos, were invited to play in a tournament in Vilnius which, as I'm sure you know, is the capital of Lithuania.

Tour rules mean that I can't let you know a great deal about our exploits; though whatever your imagination can summon - as to what 27 rugby players might get up to over three days in a town where beer is about a quid a pint - will almost certainly be tamer than the reality. Needless to say, I managed to injure myself; a cracked rib, a broken hand (I think, anyway - I'm off to hospital as soon as I've posted this and had a shower*) and a meatily bruised and neatly cut eye. My shoulder, though, held up to playing, and what a joy to get back on the pitch! I've been out all season with that shoulder, but there was no way I was going to go all that way and not test it out. I'm still not as fit as I'd like to be, and I'll need to bulk up a little, but I'd forgotten just how much fun it is to... well, run into people, screaming, ball in hand... ;)

We were undefeated, incidentally; drawing two games (5-5 and 7-7) and winning the last one by 40-odd to nil; not bad, considering that the games were less than half an hour long each.

Sadly, I didn't get to see much of Vilnius, but that which I saw was great. It's a compact city centre, but architecturally impressive - from a gigantic classical cathedral on the main square to some deeply funky new skyscrapers on the other side of the river - and it's obsessively tidily kept - it came across as being really rather propserous. The Lithuanians we met weren't exactly a respresentative sample of the population, but we had a laugh with a few of them - and the rest were really rather tolerant, considering...

[CENSORED]

... x-ray. Anyway, I've got finish some writing off tonight, wash my filthy clothes, then I've tomorrow to turn around and... I'm off! To San Fransisco! In 41 hours! I can't believe it!

* 3am update. Nothing broken!