The curtain raiser in senior men's rugby was also the dress rehearsal for the upcoming season.
The St. Albert Rugby Football Club was the centre stage for 31 players listed on the game sheet to showcase their skills for new head coach Sam Townsend in Saturday's third division match against the Grande Prairie Centaurs.
"It's good for him to see where everybody stands," said Paul Flynn, a veteran premier division prop and the first SARFC player to burst out of the change room for combat duties in the 48-29 victory.
"It's tough to know how good or how experienced everybody is in training. You see aspects of that," Flynn added. "Certainly there were some first division guys who didn't play today because they're clear first division guys and everybody else is playing for a spot and I think that's how everyone looked at it: Come out, play hard and let the chips slide where they may."
The thirds kicked off the season with a premier-calibre starting 15 lineup with several Labatt's Cup provincial champions on the pitch.
A number of players from the 2015 third division provincial Digby Dinnie Cup team also saw action against the Centaurs, 3-6-2 last year for 10th place, one spot higher than 2-9 SARFC in the 12-team table in the Edmonton Rugby Union.
A sprinkling of juniors and newcomers, including British import George Harding at standoff, also graced the main field.
There is unlimited substitution in the third division so every quarter there were wholesale changes of SARFC personnel.
"It's the first game of the season for everybody and we just want to knock some rust off. It's been a long winter and we haven't really done much in the way of real game situation stuff so it's a good opportunity for everybody to get a short run and kind of see where we are club-wise. No teams have been named yet so this was a good barometer for where everybody is going to end up in terms of what division going forward," said Flynn, who also filled in at hooker.
SARFC will need all hands on deck this weekend against the rival Clansmen. The thirds play at 8 p.m. Friday at Airways Park and the fantastic firsts, winners of three-straight Labatt's Cups, make their season debut at home Saturday at 4 p.m.
The thirds will be looking at equalling last year's win total after the entertaining performance against the Centaurs.
The first of three tries by the speedy Aaron Weicker, the man of the match, seven minutes into the opener got the thirds rolling to quarter leads of 7-5 after the first, 21-12 at halftime and 38-12 after three quarters.
Brett Kelly, a bruising forward and former captain of the fantastic firsts who spent last year on the sideline stapling his damaged body back together, played his first SARFC match since the 2015 Labatt's Cup final and in the 21st minute was sentenced to the sin-bin for an over-aggressive tackle.
In the second half, Harding's chip and chase try and conversion had the thirds in charge at 28-12 and Weicker's hat-trick score off a deep penalty play by an alert Matt Herod at scrumhalf ended the quarter.
Lawrence Ross, another premier player, padded the leaded early in the fourth quarter.
The last try for the thirds was Kelly's pick and go to make it 48-24.
"This isn't a first division win, this isn't a third division win, it's a St. Albert Rugby Club win," assistant coach Nathan Reis told the players in the post-game huddle.
The obviously play of the game was Flynn's highlight-reel chip and chase in the second quarter for the team's third try. Jon Anderson's hard run into contact past the halfway line got the ball rolling for the fleet-footed Flynn to turn on the jets.
"I think we stole ball and it came off of Mark Button and he passed it to me. I had open field but there was a guy coming in to make a tackle and I didn't see anyone in the backfield so I just said I'm giving it a shot so I put it to the (left) foot, rubbered it through and I was lucky enough to chase it down," said Flynn, 34, who received a hearty ovation from the SARFC supporters on the sun-drenched balcony while mobbed by his teammates as Luke (Aussie) Richardson teed up the successful conversion.
"I was kind of hoping that I would kick it and one of our quick guys would be able to run onto it and when you kick you've got to chase anyway because it's your ball to track down if you can do it and lucky for me none of the Grande Prairie guys were able to run me down. The ball just laid in front of the goal line and I was able to pick it up on the run and put it down over the line.
"I don't know if I will score another one like that this season."
Premier women
Saturday's main event at SARFC was the surprising 59-12 loss for the premier women against the Lep/Tigers.
SARFC moved up into the Alberta Women Premier ranks after spending last year in what was then the ERU's newly formed division one.
"For us it's a step up in a level," said head coach Byron Elliott. "They now know what they're facing with the competition and where they've got to get to."
SARFC (9-4 overall) was a division one semifinalist in the five-team circuit and the Lep/Tigers (5-7) were third in the four-team AWP table.
"They were kind of scrapping the div one competition so the idea was St. Albert, the Clan and the Pirates, who were the top teams in div one, would step up and try and make the Alberta premier division stronger," Elliott said of this year's eight-team AWP. "This is our first year and the first year playing in this level for a lot of people. There's still veteran heads (on the team) but we're still a young side."
SARFC will also field an ERU division two team.
"We're growing in numbers. We've got 40-plus girls coming out, well interested girls," Elliott said. "There was an option between stepping up (into AWP) and trying to make that competition stronger or just staying down in div two.
"I don't want to lose my top end players and I still want to recruit players coming into the sport and that's where that div two will help us in terms of developing more talent. It also makes it an easier transition for high school and junior girls to come in and kind of cut their teeth in senior rugby and then progress through, similar to how the div three works here to the prems, it's kind of a feeder kind of pool.
"We want to grow a program and keep it self-sustaining instead of just having one team, which doesn't really benefit the program or club."
The Lep/Tigers cranked it up in the second half after leading 25-5 to finish with 11 trys and two conversions.
"We're still missing some key players and they're going to come in and they're going to do a job for us but we had a bunch missing today in terms of numbers," said Elliott, noting the experience and physicality of the Lep/Tigers played a major role in the outcome. "We had 20 available but the 20 out there did a great job, a valiant job, it's just having that depth and quality at this level to be able to keep the freshness and have people come and make an impact."
Carys Williams, an import from Lichfield, Britain, scored both SARFC tries with strong runs off well-executed set-ups by her teammates.
The next match is 2 p.m. Saturday against the Clanswomen, last year's ERU division one champions, at SARFC.
