Ellerslie Rugby Park – The Labatt’s Cup provincial champions are kicking themselves over losing the season lid-lifter to the Lep/Tigers on the last play.
A blocked kick was recovered in the try area to knot the score and standoff James Mangin slotted the conversion to cap off the 20-18 stunner against the St. Albert Rugby Football Club premier men’s team Saturday.
The Lep/Tigers celebrated as if they had won the cup while the SARFC players shook their heads in disbelief over the startling outcome after leading throughout the entertaining match.
“There was a lot of excitement about this game,” said Mangin, a New Zealand import who was mobbed by teammates after splitting the uprights from a slight angle around the 22-metre line for the winning points in his Lep/Tigers debut.
“It’s part of the job, I guess. You've got to hit those,” Mangin said.
The SARFC squad deserved a better fate, but were guilty of giving the game away after standoff Joe Casella’s line-drive penalty kick from inside the 40-metre line made it 18-13 with under 20 minutes remaining.
“Mentally, we were not where we wanted to be for the start of the season,” said prop Angus (Gus) MacDonald. “There were moments where we played really good rugby, but the overall sentiment was we were just a little too disorganized and we have to come together a little bit more.”
SARFC also lost several starters in the first 15 lineup to injuries as head coach Jeremy Kyne emptied his bench of reinforcements.
“We were a bit unlucky I guess with injuries,” MacDonald said. “That’s going to make things difficult, but it was good to play through that adversity. We held strong and then we just didn't get the result at the end.”
To make matters worse, Elliott Fisher, a pint-sized scrumhalf and first-year import from Sheffield, England was sentenced to the sin-bin for breaking one of the few indictable offences in rugby a couple of minutes before the Lep/Tigers busted through a stout-hearted SARFC defensive stand after some previous robust cracks at crossing the try line.
The fateful breach was through a five-metre scrum that created chaos for the shorthanded SARFC side desperately trying to hang on for the final whistle to blow.
Bontus, an inside-centre who was handed the kicking duties after Casella limped off the pitch following his second penalty kick of the match, was on the receiving end of somewhat of a suicide pass and with several zealous green jerseys bearing down on the SARFC veteran, his attempted clearance kick was blocked by Farouq Sadiq and Chris Line retrieved the ball for the try.
“We were trying to put as much pressure on that last scrum and last kick as possible and we were lucky to get a bit of a charge there and a ricochet and luckily a couple of our boys were first to get there,” Mangin said.
MacDonald viewed the ill-fated play as an example of what plagued SARFC in the loss.
“That just came again from miscommunication. Our nine (scrumhalf) got a yellow (card) right before that and then we had the scrum and the scrum was a little bit in shambles and the ball was passed to Adam and he had three guys on him so he tried to make something out of nothing,” said the William D. Cuts teacher.
SARFC led 15-10 at halftime as Casella opened the scoring with a straight-ahead penalty kick from the 22 in the 12th minute.
Soon afterwards, a try by Duncan Maguire was waved off and after a five-metre scrum Matt Jarvis finished off a key pass by Casella for the try on the outside in the 17th minute for the 8-0 advantage.
The Lep/Tigers replied with a converted try and 10 minutes later a quick hitter by Bontus off a scrum for the try and Casella’s conversion put SARFC up by eight.
Mangin kept the Lep/Tigers within striking distance of SARFC with two lengthy penalty kicks from around the 40 with about 10 minutes left before the break and early in the second half.
As the second half progressed, the Lep/Tigers ramped up the pressure against a wilting SARFC side.
“In the first half, we were our own worst enemy. We kept on getting penalized, just stupid penalties for ourselves,” Mangin said. “In the second half, we just played down in the right end and managed to hold onto the ball and that’s when we got some penalties and scored some points.”
Mangin, 22, was caught off guard by the post-match attention he received.
“I only got here a couple of weeks ago so I don’t really know what to say to you about all of this,” said the Christchurch product of his first Alberta Cup premier match with the Lep/Tigers. “Compared to back home, this is actually a really good standard of rugby.
“Hopefully we keep building from here.”
As for the SARFC positives in the loss, “It was physical, which you want out of a first game. It was hard rugby and the boys weren’t afraid to bang it up,” MacDonald said. “Our scrums were amazing for the whole game as well.
“But even though some things went wrong and we were disorganized at times, we didn't get on each other so that's a huge positive you can always take away. If you come together as a squad like that, even in adversity, it speaks a lot about the character you have as a team.”
MacDonald, 32, an Edmonton Gold senior team player along with Maguire, was the lone front row starter to finish the match after Andy Tiedemann, the most-capped SARFC player with 38 and member of the 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cup teams for Canada, subbed off in the second half after playing the hooker position and Ryan Ackerman, a mountain of a man and playoff standout last year, shuffled to the sideline with a lower-body injury a few minutes before Fisher was ordered to the sin-bin.
On tap next for SARFC is the LA Crude, 31-21 losers to the Strathcona Druids in the season opener. Saturday’s kick off is 4 p.m. in Leduc.
“The most important part for us right now is just iron out the kinks at training this week and making sure that we get all the boys to training,” said MacDonald, one of the nine first 15 starters Saturday that started last year’s provincial final, 42-26 over the first-place Calgary Rams (13-2)in the Cow Town as SARFC finished 8-5.
Overall, 16 players that dressed against the Lep/Tigers were on the championship team against the Rams as SARFC celebrated its fourth provincial title in five years and the fifth since 2010.
SCRUM BALLS: The first match for the SARFC third division men in the Edmonton Rugby Union is 2 p.m. Saturday against the LA Crude in Leduc.
The ERU division two men’s team is 1-1 after Thursday’s 28-12 victory over the Lep/Tigers (0-1) at SARFC. Chris Butlin, the oldest player on the roster, came out of retirement and started at prop.
The next match is June 7 against the Parkland Sharks (1-0) at 7 p.m. at Ellerslie Rugby Park.
