The premier men’s rugby team dropped the ball against the Nor’Westers.
Down 14-7 at halftime, the St. Albert Rugby Football Club fumbled away a winnable match in the 33-15 loss to the Labatt’s Cup provincial champions.
SARFC pulled to within four points on Jordan Tait’s makeable penalty kick six minutes after the break but was its own worst enemy the rest of the way as the Nor’Westers answered with two tries 13 minutes apart and made it 33-10 with under 10 minutes remaining.
The fourth loss in a row to the Nor’Westers was the closest of the bunch for SARFC after unflattering setbacks of 57-26 and 51-3 last year and 46-17 July 26.
“No question it was, certainly in the first half. We played pretty well close to what we want to do and we were right in the game. Being one try down at halftime is no problem. You’re not out of it,” said prop Paul Flynn, the elder statesman of the SARFC premier side at age 36. “A close game can go either way at that point but something happened in the second half and I don’t know exactly what it was but they ended up getting a few lucky ones, or a few skilled ones maybe, and they ended up getting ahead of us and we couldn’t pick it up.
“We’ve just got to work in the next few weeks to tighten up our game and make sure we drop less balls and make our tackles.”
SARFC fell to 4-4 (219 PF/225 PA) after its third loss in four matches and the third-place Nor’Westers improved to 7-1 (298 PF/159 PA).
The Nor’Westers and SARFC are the top two Edmonton Rugby Union teams in the Alberta Cup table with two matches remaining before the north semifinals kick off Sept. 15.
SARFC host the Lep/Tigers (4-3) Aug. 30 at 6:30 p.m. and Strathcona Druids (2-5) Sept. 8 at 4 p.m.
The Lep/Tigers or the Clan (4-4) are potential semifinal opponents for SARFC to conquer for a shot at the Nor’Westers in the Aug. 22 Ken Ann Cup north final and a provincial berth on the line.
“Our goal has to be to beat these guys. If our goal is to win a provincial championship we will go through these guys to do it, no question, so we have to up our level every day,” Flynn said. “In the first half I think our shape is the right shape and our game plan is the right game plan to beat these guys, we’ve just got to keep it going. We’ve got to make our passes crisper, make our tackles crisper and execute and if we do that, I think we can beat them. They’re very beatable but they just don’t make as many mistakes as other teams and that’s the difference.”
The Nor’Westers are still leery of SARFC despite the stretch of domination after losing the 2016 Ken Ann Cup to the St. Albert club.
“I fully expect to see them in the playoffs every year. It seems like ever since we’ve kind of made our slow but gradual gain up to the top it’s always been St. Albert that we’re going against every year. It’s always a battle like we got here today. We’ve got to be ready every time we play St. Albert because that’s going to be the big game of the year. That’s going to be kind of the lithium test whether we're going into the playoffs ready to play or whether we need to put in the work to get up to that playoff level,” said Kyle Morrison, a flanker for the Nor’Westers, the first team since the 2008 Calgary Saints to hoist the Labatt’s Cup in celebration instead of SARFC (2010, 2014, 2015, 2016) or Calgary Hornets.
Flynn tap-danced around an inquiry if the Nor’Westers have SARFC rattled psychologically.
“They’re a good team, no different than we were winning games years ago,” Flynn said. “I can’t speak for everybody but I don’t look at a game as a win or a loss, I look at a game as a game and let it happen on the field and whatever happens it happens.
“Certainly we have to get better but I think we can win,” Flynn added. “I think we can beat every team in this league and that starts in the next game in two weeks against the LTs, and then we’re on to the Druids and then we're on to whoever we play in the first round of the playoffs and those are the three games that we know we have and we just have to get better and better every week.”
SARFC is 1-2 on its beloved home pitch after losing to the Nor’Westers in a “tight and physical” confrontation, according to Flynn. “Definitely our physicality and our aggression was up way more today than it was in past games so we have to keep that going.”
From the Nor’Westers’ perspective, “It was an enjoyable game of rugby on both sides,” said Morrison, noting SARFC was missing some key players in the backs in Adam Bontus (engagement commitments) and Duncan Maguire (injured shoulder). “It was a tough game. St. Albert is always a strong team. We just had to really slow our game down and play our structure just to try and open something up before they really took it to us.”
The Nor’Westers opened the scoring in the 11th minute by gradually inching towards the try line before Dakota Mercredi was sprung loose on the left side. Cory Billen kicked the conversion.
The ensuing kickoff was recovered by SARFC and within a blink of an eye Flynn bulldozed his way over the try line on a drive highlighted by an energetic run along the touchline by Matt Jarvis. Tait nailed the conversion to knot it at seven.
The majority of the half was forward driven as the teams grinded out the yards and the players stuck their tackles with stoutness.
In the 25th minute, Jake Robinson was yellow-carded for a vigorous late hit. The feisty scrumhalf got his nose dirty several times, playing with a chip on his shoulder.
Robinson was in the sin-bin when Tait was wide right on a penalty kick from an angle between the 40 and 22 metre lines with the wind at his back.
Robinson returned to the field in time for a five-metre scrum by the Nor’Westers and the ball was spun wide left for the try with six minutes left in the half. Kyle Faloon showed some moxie on the play and Billen’s conversion was good.
Fumbleitis kicked SARFC in the butt at inopportune times on promising scoring opportunities, especially when the match was too close to call before the Nor’Westers broke it open on tries by Mercredi on the outside 15 minutes into the second half, followed by a spinning Kyle White in front of the post after scooping up a loose ball behind a pile of bodies and no SARFC defenders in the vicinity.
Billen was also the finisher on the team’s last try by planting the nose of the ball over the try line. Billen, who was exceptionally sharp at standoff, finished with four conversions.
With a few minutes to play, SARFC produced a try with a spirited push down field and Robinson the ringleader. Tait’s conversion rattled the upright.
“Coming into the first 20 of the second half we kind of let off the gas a bit and let them come in,” Morrison said. “With Jakey running that team, he likes to put the pace on and really put the pressure on so you can’t really take the gas off on a guy like that because he will take it to you right away especially in that last five minutes. They really had some good forward ball, they were coming at us, they were playing heads up and picking our tired guys off at the end of the game and that’s what he likes to do.”
Morrison, 24, downplayed the suggestion the Nor’Westers haven’t lost a step after running away with last year’s provincial title.
“We’re just trying to not get too ahead of ourselves. We’re just trying to hold our ground to what we can do and not make it too complicated for ourselves. We gained some guys but we’ve also lost some guys so we’ve got to work with what our strengths are. We’ve had some guys step up that are playing really good right now and we’ve had some guys that are committed to other things, so we have to kind of work with what we’ve got and we changed our structure and changed our play to see what works for that and it’s nice because every year you get to see the guys coming up getting more experience playing at the higher levels, playing better at the higher levels, and it helps that way.”
