Some young men from across Alberta got a lesson in rugby from Canford School this week in St. Albert.
A travelling team from the school, located in Dorset, England, took on the Alberta U18 provincial squad at a soggy and mosquito-filled St. Albert Rugby Football Club (SARFC) pitch Wednesday night, besting the local boys by a final score of 30-5.
Canford outside-centre Rory Triniman, 17, said they were expecting a tough test and that's exactly what they got.
“It was a physical game. I think we all enjoyed it. We knew it was going to be a tough one,” he said. “The sides in Canada are a lot bigger than the sides we face in England.”
Dorset is located along the southern coast of England, about 200 kilometres southwest of London. The Canford squad played in two tournaments in Calgary before coming to St. Albert, winning one.
Robert Blunden, the only St. Albert product on the Alberta squad, said the experience of playing a seasoned side like Canford was invaluable.
“There was a lot of pressure in front of the home crowd,” said the 17-year-old hooker who attends Bellerose Composite High School. “But it was [good] to play at a different level.”
This was the Alberta side's first game together this year and Blunden said they were starting to gel, but have a long way to go.
“It was alright in the first half, in the beginning, but we started falling down and making mistakes, playing too fast,” he said. “We're a bigger team, and we could have just ran them over all day, but we were playing it way too fast and we shouldn't. And our communication wasn't very good at all.”
The Alberta squad has a busy schedule of exhibition games and training camps before competing at the Rugby Canada National Festival in Calgary Aug. 15 to 21.
In the first half, Canford opened the scoring with a try in the eighth minute. Alberta answered back in the 13th minute to tie the score at 5-5.
Six minutes later, the English side scored again, using their ruck to push one of their players over the try line. With the convert splitting the uprights, Canford went up 12-5.
Just being able to keep the score close in the opening half was a positive sign for Blunden and his Alberta teammates.
“I thought we were doing really well,” he said. “I don't know what happened. We just dropped our intensity and mistakes were coming up everywhere.”
In the 30th minute, Triniman extended Canford's lead as he managed to dive into the corner of the end zone while being tackled.
Triniman conceded the Alberta squad had a big size advantage on Canford and none of the tries they scored on the night came easy.
“They were all in the corner, which didn't make it easy on our kicker,” he said.
A Canford penalty kick in stoppage time rounded out the scoring in the first half, giving the English squad a 20-5 lead at the break.
In the second half, Canford added two more tries in the 45th and 60th minutes, missing the convert both times, to make the final 30-5.
Triniman said the difference was Canford's ability to get the ball out wide to the wings and run, while Alberta played a more bruising style of game through the middle of the pitch.
“Canada seems to play a lot more forward-oriented, physical, closer rugby — really bashing it up because they're, size-wise, so much bigger than us,” he said. “I talked to people who have been out here before and they said you've got to send it out wide.”
This was the first time SARFC had hosted an international match since 2009.
After St. Albert, the Canford squad headed to Banff for a little rest and relaxation before leaving for British Columbia, where they will play games in Kelowna on Monday and in Vancouver on Thursday.
“All the boys are really enjoying it. The hospitality of all the hosts and the billets has been great,” Triniman said.
