Nor’Westers Field - It’s official: The fantastic firsts are now the floundering firsts.
The St. Albert Rugby Football Club’s struggling premier men’s team hit rock bottom in the 51-3 rout by the Nor’Westers in Friday’s wind and rain.
The third loss in four matches for the SARFC first 15 was also the second shellacking in two weeks administered by Nor’Westers against the Labatt’s Cup provincial champions the last three years.
As bad as the 57-26 fiasco on SARFC soil was - the Nor’Westers led 57-7 with about 15 minutes to play - the rematch was a total disaster.
However, head coach Sam Townsend was surprisingly optimistic the day after the fiasco.
“Obviously we want to be successful on the pitch. We want to be successful as a prems side. We don’t want to just accept defeat and say, ‘You know what? It doesn’t matter this year because we won it three years in a row.’ We want to improve and the message to the guys in the change room yesterday was just use this defeat as another learning tool and that’s what we will do and take the opportunity to improve,” Townsend said of the 2-3 firsts.
While championships are not won in June, the prospects of a four-peat and five Labatt’s Cup since 2010 are looking very bleak with the Nor’Westers poised to replace SARFC as the northern rep at provincials in the Alberta Cup premier playoffs.
“This win feels good because they’ve been such a powerhouse for so long and they still are a powerhouse,” said flanker Kyle Morrison, captain of the first-place Nor’Westers (6-0) after the third victory in the last four contests against the firsts, dating back to August of 2016.
“It feels good to build up in the few years we’ve been in first division (since 2014) into that strength to beat the champs and I’m happy about that,” Morrison added. “It’s always a hard match going against St. Albert. They’ve been our rivals for years and I’ve played with a lot of the guys on the team (with the Alberta Selects and Prairie Wolf Pack) and they’re great players so anytime we play them it’s always either or.”
The Nor’Westers, runner-ups to SARFC in the last two Ken Ann Cup finals, locked up a berth in the Sept. 23 provincial qualifier with Friday’s overwhelming show of force.
“I’m looking forward to playing them in the city championship again. I would love another rematch for that one,” Morrison said.
The firsts have eight matches remaining to turn the ship around to secure home-field advantage in the Sept. 16 semifinal as the second highest-ranked north team in the premier table against the Strathcona Druids (1-3), Lep/Tigers (1-4) or the Clan (0-4).
Townsend isn’t too concerned over the team’s losing record in what’s shaping up to be the worst season since the infamous 6-8 record in 2013 as 61-15 losers to the Clan in the Ken Ann Cup.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m worried about it,” said Townsend, the fourth head coach of the SARFC men’s program in four years.
“The Nor’Westers are a very, very good side and some of those things they’re doing I personally haven’t seen a team play like that since I’ve been here and I’ve watched a fair amount of rugby so they’ve obviously been building towards this almost like a crescendo. The desire for them, particularly against us, to succeed and win is there.
“But again I said it when I spoke to you the first time (April 22 story in the Gazette), success isn’t just what happens on the field. It’s about what happens off of it as well and I think as much as the guys are a little bit disappointed with the performances the feeling around the club is still pretty positive. The third div guys (4-1) are playing really well. We’ve got loads of young guys coming through like Ben Miller and Josh Freeman playing third div and playing exceptionally well and in a couple of years time those guys will be out there pulling on the jersey for the prem guys and that for me is as important as the prem guys winning on a Saturday.”
What was startling about Friday’s damaging result was the lack of offensive drive and imagination by the firsts on the few opportunities they actually had ball possession. George Harding’s penalty kick in the 23rd minute from around the 22-mertre line was a head scratcher with the firsts only down by 17 points.
Six minutes earlier, the firsts pushed their way deep into enemy territory for the first time in the match, only to have a penalty called against them and the Nor’Westers wasted little time matching down field for a converted try in the 17th minute.
The firsts threatened again in prime scoring rage but instead of rising to the occasion and pinning their ears back for the try they opted for Harding, a British import, to kick the makeable penalty.
The Nor’Westers then proceeded to go the distance to make it 22-3 in the 26th minute and that was the ball game.
The halftime score was 27-3.
“Obviously confidence is an issue. We’re not being as creative as well as we possibly could be because we don’t have the quality confidence to do it. There is nothing really to do with our skills. I think our skill set is OK it’s just having really tough confidence doing it,” Townsend said. “(The Nor’Westers were) flying very high and doing things. They’re throwing dummies and skirting around the edges and executing really well because they’ve got the confidence to do it where as at the moment we are not confident enough to just try something and that’s actually what the key to our success was at the beginning against the Clan (37-31 win at SARFC) for example in the first game of the season. We had the confidence to try something different and George was putting those kicks in over the top and things were coming off for us and I don’t think we’ve got the confidence to try something different.”
Superlative performances by the Nor’Westers included winger Liam O’Hallahan’s four tries, highlighted by a couple of scores off chip-and-chase kicks by his teammates, and standoff Harry Boyd, a first-year import who was head and shoulders the best player on the pitch.
“We trained to be ready for a hard, had game and it played out to be a hard, hard game,” said Morrison, 23. “I knew St. Albert was going to be pissed coming into this game and very angry. They wanted to get back at us (after losing 57-26). They’re not a team that is going to lie down and just let you come at them. When they come on the field they’re ready to play.
“Because of the conditions it was very sloppy rugby (with an unusually high number of scrums). I think we were just a little more melded together. We know what the guys are going to do so we can kind of move the ball accordingly.
“I just don’t think the conditions were out for them. They’re very back heavy and they play an expansive game but they came at us hard and I think on the day we were the better team.”
When asked if it was a disappointing loss, Townsend replied: “To be brutally honest I said to the guys in the change room afterwards that defensively it was actually a pretty good performance (except for) the one on one tackles. The one-up stuff you need to stick the tackles otherwise the defensive structure, everything we work on in terms of our defence, doesn’t count for anything. We need to stick the tackles. They were breaking first-up tackles pretty much 65-70 per cent of the time so we need to make sure we work on our technique and try and get a better understanding as to why we talk about body position in terms of tackling and then actually work it back on feet. Our defensive structure relies on guys being on feet and creating line speed.”
The next match is Saturday against the Calgary Saints (2-2) at 4 p.m. at SARFC.
