We’re big rugby fans here in the Hewett household, and have loved going to Glendale’s Infinity Park (the only purpose-built-for-rugby stadium in the US) to watch the Raptors over the past couple of years. Well, this year, the local rugby movement that got that park built pulled off another coup and played host to the Churchill Cup!  The Churchill Cup is an annual international rugby tournament held in North America, and this year was entirely held in the Denver Metro Area.

We’ve been to most of the matches (see earlier blog post here) and the finals were held on Saturday, June 21st (Father’s Day) at Dick’s Sporting Good’s Park.  We ordered tickets very early and were able to grab tickets in the third row, so I knew I was going to take my camera!  Due to family in town for the baby shower though, I had to do a lot of running back and forth to the airport and didn’t get any pictures of the England v Ireland match that decided first place (Ireland won, sadly – the English side came out flat, and just played way too sloppy), but I did get some great shots of the first match of the day, between Canada and Argentina.  This match was to decide 3rd place in the tournament and was very hard fought by both sides!  The tackling was brutal – as you can see in a few of the pictures below – and yellow cards were given out to players from both sides.  The best thing about rugby though is that even though the match was tough and argentina won handily (final score was 44-29), in the end, both teams celebrated the victory together.  I’m sure the hangovers the next morning were just as brutal as the tackling!

Hope you enjoy these shots: