My first international: The result

So Thailand has safely secured 61st position in the IRB world rankings, beating us 40-12 on Wednesday night. An enjoyable game, still feeling sore.

A report sent via email to my Dad earlier in the week...WARNING: tune out now if you're bored by rugby chat...

Ran all bloody night. Didn’t really feel like a game of rugby, spent a lot of time either in a scrum or defending. They were very good at turning over ball from our centres in the tackle (excellent back row), so I’d pop my head out of a dominant scrum, only to find the ball to be in their hands again!

Their backs we’re really good. Not big blokes, but amazing ball skills and ran some terrific broken play support angles. Also played a good territory game, so we tended to spend a lot of time in our own half.

Smashed their scrum, technically they were OK, but may not have the strength and size that we had. Their tighthead was not bad and was working a little angular curry, but my loosehead is pretty handy and we were able to split them a bit on their feed and win some ball as the game moved on.

Their lineout wasn’t too bad, a couple of uncharacteristically tall Thai blokes standing at 2 and 5, so made it a little tough with a slippery ball. I played OK, got a few good hits in, but didn’t play much forward stuff with so much defending to do.

Picture above - the team after the game.