Rugby in Albi

Yesterday Lauren, Keirsten, Gabe and I went to Albi to see a rugby match.  Being hungry for sports of any sort, when I was asked to transport these three students, I eagerly accepted.  Originally we had thought that the match was to be played at 3 at another stadium, so we arrived for the 2 o'clock game, we were late.  The fact that we had to park about a mile away from the stadium didn't help matters, but we finally got there.  Imagine my delight and excitement with seeing Steeler Gold and Black colors on the flag of the Sports Club of Albi!  Fans in Black and Gold were all over the place.  Now the mascot is a yellow jacket, which brought me no comfort, but would have pleased my wife, a teacher a Ferndale H.S. for 35 years, where the mascot is, you guessed it, a yellow jacket!

For a releatively low price of 9 Euros, we each were able to get a seat at the very corner of the stadium, where we sat about 5 rows from the field.  Actually pretty great seats.  There was already about 17 minutes into the 40 minute half, so we did miss a bit.  Aurrilac led 7 to nil.  The fabs were cheering Albi, ici,ici.  which roughly means Albi, we are here, we are here.  And I thought Penn States "We are Penn State" was lame.  But we joined in the cheering.  Not knowing the rules, we tried to understand what was happening.  About 7minutes after we got these, a fight broke out on the field.  About 10 players were pounding and jumpimg on each other.  Now there are no helmets for the most part and no pads for these players, so the fighting was intense and several players got really banged up.  A couple were ejected.  The students and I were really interested in response from the fans, similar to hockey fans during a fight in the U.S.  We got into it as well!  Soon, Albi scored a touchdown and then a field goal, or something similar and took the lead 10-7.  They never looked back!

Another neat thing is the little car they use to take the tee for kicking field goals onto the field.  It is remote controlled and I thought very good in the muddy field. 

                                               The tee car (thanks Kirsten)
At half time a group of cheerleaders came onto the field.  A Lady Gaga song was started and the cheerleaders, that were dressed in much more clothing than the players, started to dance.  Well, I guess it was dancing.  The only person that looked liked it had any rhythm was the mascot.  They tried to do cartwheels and flips.  One cheerleader's head actually stuck in the mud when she tried to flip!  For the grand finally, the cheerleaders attempted to lift 2 members over their heads in some sort of pose.  The e cheerleaders were only placed about head high, which was lucky, as one was quickly dropped in the mud, tried to be lifted again and went down again.  It was hilarious!  As they left the field, they stopped in front of the grandstands, where the students and I cheered them loudly, but the rest of the fans seemed indifferent.  That's sad because they were very entertaining, albeit not very good.
As we walked out in the area with food stands, we were disappointed to see that you needed to have something called jetsons (tokens) for food and drink.  I was going to have a boisson, but couldn't due to not having jetsons and not really knowing how to procure them.
In the second half we had similar confusion over rules and such, but the final score favored Albi, so we, like everyone else, were quite excited.  I went into their souvenir shop, thinking I'd like to buy a tee shirt or something.  There had been signs for golf shirts with the team emblem for 15 Euros as well.  When I got there, no shirts of any sort were available in my size.   I'll try later, I guess.
As we left, we saw a sign that indicated there would be a bus for the game against Auch next Saturday night.  It is 12 Euros for the bus and 15 for the game, if i read the sign right (of course, there is no guarantee of that).  We are thinking about going!
After the rugby match we went to the Irish Pub for a pint and watched the Irish national team play the Argentine national team on TV.  Great fun all day!

The students at the rugby match!  These were the only empty seats in the stadium, so there were a lot of fans at the game.  Here, I'll show you.