Recently Jim Griffiths (co-director and co-owner of Stream Interactive) competed in the 2018 Pan Pacific Masters Games, playing his favourite sport of Touch Rugby. The Pan Pacific Masters Games is one of the largest biennial sporting events in the world, this year there were 16,000 athletes, from 40 countries, competing in 42 sports.
In touch rugby, New Zealand was well represented by the Galaxy Touch Club who took 8 teams to play in various age grades for men and woman and also combined men and woman. Galaxy won 7 Gold medals and 1 Silver.
For Jim, training for this event started 4-5 months before the tournament, playing during the winter months with many of his team mates, trying to build up combinations and game time. This really ramped up over the last few months with regular squad training, fitness work and tactics. The team contains many world-class players, some of them current New Zealand representatives and were coached by experienced mentors.
From the outset the teams main goal was to win gold in the 50+ year grade, something that no New Zealand side had ever done in Australia. They achieved this by winning all of their 7 games scoring 39 tries while only allowing 4 by the opposition.
