OK we're ramping up now.

GRR will be on the road this weekend and we will be at Dartmouth at Harvard to see the new Harvard regime kick off. Dartmouth is probably favored here but, yes, we'll be there.

Also this weekend we will cruise by Siena at Iona on Saturday so stop by and say hi. That is another Liberty Conference face-off. Siena, as you probably know, was a small-college challenge team two years ago. It turned out their recruiting efforts were really successful and they needed to be in another division.

What Happened to Make Siena College Rugby So Dominant So Fast

Siena jumped right past D2 to D1AA, only to be tracked into the NCR D1 playoffs because of how successful they were. Now perhaps Siena can play a season without things being changed at the last minute. This is an early game that shows us a lot.

And barring last-minute changes we'll also go see AIC on Sunday, with small-college power Babson.

Other Stuff

Trinity won big in their opening games but then the Dublin University faced Navy on Tuesday night (won 36-14) and will take on Army on Friday night. It was a pretty solid showing for Navy against a very experienced Trinity side. Sean MacLaney and Jacob D'Amico scored the tries for Navy, with Roanin Krieger converting both. 

“Win, lose or draw, we knew we were going to take valuable lessons from this game against one of the best teams in Ireland. It’s tough to lose, but we don’t fear losing. We are okay with the loss as long as we can take lessons away from it,” said director of rugby Gavin Hickie. “Today we learned about the subtleties, nuances, speed and how any inaccuracy will be punished in a game against a high-quality opponent like we saw today. There were a lot of positives, but when you play the game at the very top level and you’re inaccurate, you get punished. That is an important lesson for us to see."

Navy will play Indiana next and IU meets up with Michigan State while Ohio State visits Illinois in Big 10 action. 

We're quite interested in Queens at Wheeling (Rugby East NCR at NCR Big Rivers), and Kutztown at Adrian (Rugby East NCR at former NCR Big Rivers that is now D1A Midwest). 

But, perhaps most intriguing for us is Belmont Abbey vs Southern Virginia. Belmont Abbey has lost two games in competitive scores so far and are setting themselves up nicely for a good run in the Southern Conference. Like SVU, Belmont is one of those new breed of school-supported teams and those schools have had to work very hard to recruit players from in and out of the USA. (Next Phase Rugby anyone?).

Southern Virginia's win last week over Rio Grande was a good showing for the new coaching tandem of Aidyn and Marshall Ferris, under the watchful eye of Director of Rugby David Smyth.

"Our faith is central to what we do," said Marshall Ferris, who played at SVU before becoming a graduate assistant and then bringing in his brother to help goal. "With that, Aidyn and I was to keep building on what David has done. We're targeting growth and continued improvement. And what we can do is be a little different. The makeup of of the team is we have more Polynesian players and they're big ball carriers and play a different style than you normally see on the East Coast. What we try to do is give the boys the freedom to paly the way they want to play."

It's a team with potential that can shake up the region. Now in D1A SVU will look to move up in a Rugby East that is seeing almost every team get better.