Airways Park – The St. Albert women’s rugby team can regain lost ground in the first-place battle with the Pirates tonight after Saturday’s setback to the Clan.
The 57-31 loss to the third-place Clan dropped the ladies one point behind the Pirates in the Edmonton Rugby Union division one table.
The Pirates (7-1, nine bonus points) hold the upper hand with two matches in hand on St. Albert (7-3, eight BP) entering the third tilt of the season between the pennant contenders.
Kickoff is 6:30 p.m. at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club.
The only loss for the Pirates was the memorable 46-45 back-and-forth cliffhanger July 27 at SARFC as the home team racked up eight tries and three conversions and the visitors replied with seven tries and five conversions. At halftime it was 26-22 Pirates.
“I’m super excited to play them at home. It will be great,” said winger MacKenzie Doughty after her hat-trick performance against the Clan with three tries. “We’re definitely going in with our tails up on Wednesday and that truly helps having that little bit of confidence before the first whistle sounds.”
The top team will draw fourth-place Crude/West (2-6, three BP) and the second semifinal Sept. 17 will feature the Clan, (6-3, six BP), who defeated St. Albert in the last two encounters by a combined score of 116-43 after falling 31-19 June 29 at SARFC.
“They’re a bigger team and definitely their average age is older for sure but we have a lot of young girls stepping up for us and they’re killing it this season,” Doughty said.
The Clan scored nine tries Saturday, two less than the previous match, and led 31-19 at halftime, compared to 30-0 at the break last month.
“It was a really fun one to play actually. We played a lot better than last time when we kind of got stopped,” Doughty said of the 59-12 drubbing on the Clan pitch July 23. “We were so much more strong in the centres today and all around the team really stepped it up this match. I know we tapered a little bit in the second half and that’s kind of when they got the points on us but we showed a lot more in this game.”
The Clan struck first with a try in the fourth minute and St. Albert answered three minutes later with a try by Emily Dewitt and her twin sister, Kendall, kicked the conversion. The second penalty play in a row for St. Albert set-up the try, a kick and chase by Emily from outside the 22-metre line as the ball landed in the try area behind the posts.
After the Clan jumped ahead 19-7 with two converted tries six minutes apart. St. Albert dug its heels in with a stout defensive stand and reversed its field position with a valiant scoring drive, capped off with Doughty the finisher on the outside off Brie Gray’s pass from in front of the five-metre line.
In the 30th minute, Doughty’s second try was a long run involving a series of straight-ahead soccer-style ball-kicking along the ground as Doughty and team captain Michelle Marler blew through the Clan’s defensive line before it was touched in the try area. Kendall’s conversion knotted it at 19.
The Clan roared back with two tries, with the second coming off the kick-off after the initial score and the conversion left St. Albert trailing by 12.
The momentum carried over into the second half for the Clan with a converted try four minutes after the beak, followed by another try three minutes later to make it 43-19. “It kind of wears on your spirit a little bit,” Doughty said of the 24 consecutive points that turned the tide into a sizeable advantage for the Clan.
“I know one thing we’ve really been working on and Byron (Elliott, the head coach) has really been pushing this year is coming out strong straight out of the gates and we’ve kind of failed to do that for a few games. I know our last game against Grande Prairie (73-22 blowout Aug. 6 against the winless Sirens at SARFC and the halftime score was 53-7) we did that quite well so he kind of called on us this game to do that again,” Doughty added. “Unfortunately we did end up falling back a bit and I think it was just maybe the heat and we got tired.”
Give the ladies credit for not throwing in the towel as tries by Doughty and Marler, which was converted by Kendall, pulled the team within 12 of the leaders at 43-31, but with time ticking down the Clan padded the lead with two converted tries.
“The second half tends to be ours and that’s when our fitness kind of comes into it a little bit,” Doughty said. “They’re a bigger team and sometimes we kind of get the foot up on a team like that in the second half just because we do have a lot of athletes.”
Doughty, 21, and the rest of her teammates remained upbeat after the loss.
“There are a lot of positives and a lot of good things to pull away from this game, a lot of things we’re working on and some fixes that we definitely need to work on, like tackling and definitely getting lower in the tackles. I know we heard that from the sideline a lot from the coaches,” said the high school rugby product of the Paul Kane Blues who also serves on the SARFC board of directors as the secretary and women’s club captain.
