Playing high stakes game to stay alive

WE’RE coming off the back of another good win against Fiji this week and one of the key messages was ‘staying alive’ and ‘expecting the unexpected’.

- OLAMIDE SODEHE

In preparation for the game, we worked really hard on these aspects. However in the pathway, it isn’t serious all the time, and our coaches and support staff were led by Haydn Thomas to give us a rendition of Stayin’ Alive and changed the lyrics to match our themes in defence! Everyone has funny ways of revision and making information stick, but a well-produced music video was a new one for me... and it certainly worked.

Outside of rugby, we have been keeping our padel tennis skills topped up and a few of us take it quite seriously. It’s starting to kick on a bit throughout the squad and we’re getting more and more interest as the sessions go on. You could say the interest was sparked by the senior men’s team and seeing how they used their down time over in France last autumn, it looked great fun and it has proved to be so far. With the padel courts not far from where we are in Cape Town, it’s a great social out for the boys and is great craic. It will naturally get quite competitive, and the one to watch out for is Nathan Michelow. Although, he does have a tennis background so has the head start over most of us!