Saturday’s loss to the Nor’Westers was hard to swallow for the fantastic firsts.
The Labatt’s Cup provincial champions the last two years choked on a 12-point lead with around 10 minutes remaining after battling back from a 17-point halftime deficit with 29 unanswered points but lost 38-36 in dramatic fashion on a converted try on the last play of the Alberta Cup premier men’s shocker at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club.
“It’s extremely disappointing,” a visibly upset Duncan Maguire, captain of the SARFC first 15 in the match, told the Gazette after the second loss of the season halted a five-game winning streak.
“To work this hard all week in training and then go out flat and let them get up on us and then we work our asses off to come back and get up on them, that’s when we stepped off the gas because we get cocky and showed disrespect for our opponents,” Maguire said. “It’s a typical story. Every game so far we have disrespect for our opponents.”
The Nor’Westers were walking on sunshine after standoff Cory Billen split the uprights from near the touchline in front of the 22-metre line for the winning points following the second of two tries in a blink of an eye to knot it at 36.
“It was a huge win for us. We’re pretty impressed,” Billen said with a blinding smile. “For a few years St. Albert has been the class act in Alberta, and especially in Edmonton, and it means a lot to beat them. We hope it will give us a bit of a boost going into the playoffs. Hopefully we can meet in the final again but this game won’t count for anything when it comes to playoff time.”
The over-confident firsts were undefeated in 16 matches against north teams in league and playoffs combined, dating back to August of 2014, including victories over the Nor’Westers of 28-19 in the last year’s Ken Ann Cup north final and 50-35 in the season opener before the pratfall.
“Since we’ve been in the premier division (in 2014) we’ve beat every other club in Alberta but we hadn’t beat St. Albert. This was a big day for them (Super Saturday tripleheader in celebration of 35 years of St. Albert rugby) so we knew they wanted to put on a performance and we had to match their intensity,” Billen said.
“It was certainly a match of twists and turns. We had all the momentum in the first half and then straight in the second half St. Albert came out with the wind behind their back and really took it to us and the boys had to dig deep and turn it back around,” Billen continued. “The momentum swings in the game were huge but we managed to pull it out at the end.”
The firsts (6-2) kissed first place good bye in premier with the loss and their hold on second place is down to five points over the Nor’Westers (5-3) with three matches remaining before the north playoffs kick off Sept. 17.
“That was a very important game to maintain second place going into playoffs. Hopefully it’s heads up from here,” Maguire said. “Because we’ve been very successful the past few seasons we think were untouchable and right now it’s a great time to really kick it into gear.”
The firsts opened the scoring with A.J. King’s try and Antony Fitch’s conversion in the 14th minute and the Nor’Westers replied with a push-over try from the five-metre line and the conversion tied it up.
Three minutes later, the firsts received a yellow card and the Nor’Westers would go on to roll up two converted tries seven minutes apart.
Billen, 29, wrapped up the first half with a penalty kick from in front of the 40-metre line to make it 24-7.
“The first half was actually garbage,” Maguire stated.
The comeback charge started four minutes into the second half as winger Aaron Weicker made tracks into the try area off a penalty play in scoring range.
Four minutes later, a sensational scoring run by Maguire, who has played for the Canada 15s and 7s teams, was converted by Fitch to narrow the gap to 24-19.
In the 53rd minute, Robert Blunden showed surprising speed for a hooker during a lengthy breakaway off a loose ball turnover for the game-tying try.
After the kick-off, a yellow card was issued to the Nor’Westers. Injuries also started to take their toll on the firsts, who were also missing some key starters to the Prairie Wolf Pack in the Canadian Rugby Championship circuit.
When play resumed after an injury timeout to the firsts, a lineout in front of the Nor’Westers’ five-metre line was capped off with a try by King, an outside-centre, in the 65th minute as Andy (Pinky) Kelleher displayed great passing hands and second-half sub Johnny Moloney provided the grunt work off the throw in.
As the match wound down, Maguire chased down a kick for his second try and the conversion made it 36-24. Kelleher and second-half sub Justin (Bomber) Armitt got the ball rolling for the fullback to put the pedal to the metal.
Things then started to unravel after another yellow card to the firsts and the Nor’Westers proceeded to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, much to the chagrin of the firsts and their vocal supporters.
“We got momentum going in the second half. We got up and then we started losing composure and we start lipping off the other team,” Maguire said. “There were some bad calls by the ref, but you can’t blame it on that. It was our lack of respect for our own opponents that did it.”
In the previous meeting the Nor’Westers jumped ahead 11-0 before falling behind 33-14 at the break, en route to losing by 22 points on their home pitch.
“We’ve been doing a lot of extra fitness work so in this game we had that extra gear to go into and I’m sure come playoff time St. Albert will have been working on that and it will be a completely different proposition,” said Billen, a fourth-year Nor’Wester from Wales who was unavailable for last year’s Ken Ann Cup.
The firsts are back on the pitch Aug. 20 against the Clan (2-5) at 4 p.m. at Airways Park.
SCRUM BALLS: The third division men fell to 2-7 after Saturday’s 38-24 loss to the Clan (5-3-1) at SARFC. It was 7-7 after the first quarter and 21-19 Clan at halftime after the thirds jumped ahead 19-7 in the second quarter. The thirds regained the lead at 24-21 on Aiden Zalasky’s try near the end of the third quarter.
Matt Mackenzie scored two tries and Jon Anderson also crossed the try line for the thirds, who lost multiple players to injuries, including a broken nose to a bloody Sean LeLacheur that resulted in a red card to the Clan for rough play in the third quarter of the chippy affair.
The last home match of the season for the thirds is Saturday versus the Edson Axmen (5-3) at 2 p.m.
