Ellerslie Rugby Park – The Great Firsts were not that great in the Ken Ann Cup north final.
The Strathcona Druids made the premier men’s team at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club look very ordinary as Saturday’s 32-7 score flattered the defending Labatt’s Cup provincial champions.
“They were the better ones today,” said Angus (Gus) MacDonald, captain of the Great Firsts, while watching the Druids whoop it up after the presentation of the Ken Ann Cup.
“We know what it’s like to be over there with that cup,” MacDonald added. “Obviously those guys haven’t been in this situation in a decade.”
The Druids were competing in their second north final in three years and the Ken Ann Cup victory was the first since the 2004-6 three-peat by the Sherwood Park-based club.
“It’s class to win a championship. They don’t come around every year,” said Darragh Keller, the hammer at eight-man for the forward-pounding Druids. “I know a lot of the St. Albert lads and they’re good lads so we always love to have a go at each other and, for it to be the final where we're facing each other, it was great fun."
As for the SARFC first 15, the north final was the 11th in 12 years after winning their ninth Ken Ann Cup since 2008 and the fifth Labatt’s Cup since 2010 last year.
“We’re kind of a victim of success a little bit,” MacDonald said. “We’ve always been there so we kind of think that we deserve something maybe, but obviously that wasn’t the case today.”
Head coach Jeremy Kyne didn’t mince words over the outcome in the post-match huddle.
“We did it to ourselves, right?” Kyne asked the players. “It’s probably the way it’s been all season. We’ve punished ourselves by not preparing properly. We let it get away from us a bit and then we try and claw our way back into games, and it’s much easier to play from in front, but I think one to 15 or one to 23 today we all made our fair share of mistakes and we’ve talked about it a lot. When one guy’s making a mistake and the next guy is making a mistake you’ve got to try and corral that and bring it back to playing easy rugby. We’re just trying to play too complicated.
“The reality for this club though is that those guys are on the young age so we’ve got many years ahead of us playing against those guys and if we want to be competing against them – and I think today man to man we should’ve beaten them, but we didn’t, we didn’t show up – so we’re going to have to get better,” Kyne continued. “Obviously there is going to be some downtime between now and 2020 but the impetus should be having it in our brains about how painful it is to go out in this situation and work a little bit harder.”
Roaring start
The Druids cracked the whip with ferocity on the opening kick off with a try by forward Jonathan Clarke that was converted before the match was two minutes old.
A penalty kick in front of the 40-metre line in the 11th minute left SARFC trailing by 10 points.
The Druids would later miss the uprights on a penalty around the halfway line in the 15th minute.
Two minutes later, Alex Burd was going full throttle towards the try area when Duncan Maguire upended the Druid with a sprawling tackle from behind. However, Burd was still able to put the ball down past the line and the conversion made it 17-0.
Maguire injured his left shoulder on the play and was done for the day. His replacement at fullback, Luke (Aussie) Richardson, pulled off a try-saving tackle shortly after subbing on as the Druids showed no signs of slowing down.
“We always have a very tight game with St. Albert so we knew if we didn’t start from the get-go it was going to be a tough game,” said Keller, noting the 22-19 loss after the Druids blew a big lead June 14 and the 28-28 draw Sept. 7. “If we didn’t keep our foot on the pedal they would come right back into it and we would be standing here unhappy at the end of the game.”
In the 22nd minute, the normally reliable Brian Fitzpatrick was unsuccessful kicking a penalty from the 40 following a sizable run by Matt Jarvis.
The Druids responded with a successful penalty kick between the 22 and 40 in the 30th minute.
The first half ended with MacDonald, a gregarious prop, holding up a try with a feat of strength after a Druids’ lineout at the five-metre line.
The TSN turning point, according to Keller, was the try eight minutes into the second half on a play that started with a lineout ball by the Druids around the SARFC 22 and after some pick and go plays, Tim Clarke stepped out of a low tackle and rumbled across the try line.
“It sealed it for me. I knew we were going to win,” Keller said of the 25-point advantage.
SARFC avoided getting shut out as Joe Casella flew down the pitch with a dazzling display of footwork with 19 minutes remaining. Andrew (Kiwi) Marsden converted the try in place of Fitzpatrick, who left the final with an injured right knee that stemmed from an impactful collision on his short kick-and-chase attempt early in the second half.
“We knew if we could stop them front up we were going to win,” Keller said. “We’ve been working on our defence the last three, four weeks and that’s pretty much all we’ve been doing (in training). We knew if we could shut them down and stop them from getting over the gain line they were done because, if they get through, Duncan is lightning quick and you’re never going to catch him.”
Leigh Grieve scored the last try by the Druids with eight minutes to go and player/coach Colin Sheridan, who is also the team’s kicker, converted the score.
In a season of several heart-pounding comeback victories there was no miracle finish for SARFC.
“Right from the start of the whistle it just didn’t go the way we wanted it to go and then we were chasing the whole game,” MacDonald said. “We’ve been lucky in the past being able to come back from a few deficits like that, but it just wasn’t ment to be today.”
Rough and tumble
The bruising and at times nasty affair was taxing on both teams with multiple injuries.
“There was a lot of niggles today,” Keller said. “It was fun. Everyone was just trying to mash each other.”
There was no shortage of overzealous penalties as the teams seemed bent on destruction. Adam Bontus, in particular, was trying to extract his pound of flesh from every Druid he tackled and was crashing rucks like a wild man.
“It’s part of rugby and that was part of our intention, too. Those are young guys and we wanted to get under their skin and I’m sure they wanted to try and get under our skin so it was kind of going both ways,” MacDonald said. “There were some good collisions, but unfortunately we were on the wrong end of it when it came to Jarvy and I’m hoping he’s doing OK.”
After the try by the Druids, a hellacious crash while going for the ball in the air on the ensuing kick left Jarvis face down and motionless on the pitch and Jakob Butler of the Druids wasn’t moving as well. Athletic therapists from both teams, plus medical personnel in attendance at the match, checked out the players while extra attention surrounded Jarvis as concerned teammates also provided assistance.
An extremely groggy Jarvis was able to get to his knees before he was guided to the nearby sideline where he was continually being checked over while sitting on the grassy hill before the ambulance arrived.
Butler, his shoulder wrapped in ice, had a brief chat with Jarvis to see if he was OK before the SARFC winger was whisked away.
The latest update on Jarvis, the team’s leading scorer this year with at least one try in 10 of the team’s 12 matches before the Ken Ann Cup, was encouraging: the scans were clear at the hospital and he was gradually feeling better.
While the aftermath of the loss for SARFC wasn’t as painful as the injury to Jarvis, it still stung, especially after manhandling the Druids in last year’s semifinal, 34-12 in snow, in the same way the Druids took SARFC to the woodshed in the Ken Ann Cup final.
“Our scrum last year wasn’t anywhere near as good and you guys ate us up,” Keller said. “We were actually a lot light in the pack and this year we added a couple of heavier lads and really focused on our physicality and defence.”
SARFC finished 7-5-1 with a revamped lineup as injuries and the absence of a number of key starters from last year's 8-5 championship team took a heavy toll.
“We just did it to ourselves a little in that commitment to playing rugby,” said MacDonald, 33, who took over the captain’s role when the valuable Orrin Farries busted a knee late in the season.“As a men’s program in general, our numbers from the start of the year were dwindling. We started with three teams, but we had to drop the thirds because people weren’t around and as for the seconds near the end of the year we had to forfeit the last (two matches) as well.”
As for the 9-3-1 Druids, “It’s been a great year. Everything we’ve been building on the last few years kind of cemented this year. We had a couple of older lads come back and a couple of new lads coming in and it just kind of gelled,” said Keller, 29, a third year Druid from Ireland.
“This is one of the best teams we’ve had.”
