David Revald Lubans, the Latvian Llama, guides the ship this year taking over from his good friend Johnny ‘Mohammed’ Allen. Lubes was educated at Sydney University where he did a BA in Human Movement and Health Education. He then went on to work as a P.E. teacher, before arriving at Oxford to read an MSc in Educational Studies, which has now effectively been extended to a DPhil by research.

Lubes came to OURFC at the age of 28, but still physically young due to a 5 year gap in his rugby career resulting from a serious shoulder injury.

Despite that, he still managed to build an impressive CV, representing Australian U17s, Australian Barbarians 7s, Australian Universities, Northern Suburbs 1st XV, NSW schools, NSW U19s, and NSW county 1st XV when he played against the British and Irish Lions. His latest accolade was representing the Lativa 7s team by virtue of his father’s birth place. Next year he hopes to play for Germany, where his grandfather was born!

Lubes is an accomplished basketball player, surfer, and track and field athlete. He also claims to be a bit of a soccer wizard – no doubt you are Dave, but it’s all relative… did Australia even make it to the qualifying rounds in the Korean World Cup?

Apart from extensive reading, travelling, and playing the saxophone, Lubes enjoys educating the younger squad members (that’s pretty much everyone I guess – relatively speaking) with his grandiloquent words of wisdom.

“I don’t crave security, I want to hazard my soul to opportunity.”