Airways Park – The comeback kids did it again.
Teetering on the brink of defeat, the premier men’s rugby team willed its way to another gripping must-win performance in the Alberta Cup fixtures.
The 36-26 surge against the Clan, after trailing by nine at halftime, was decided on the try under the posts by Matt Jarvis and Brian Fitzpatrick’s conversion with seven minutes left to snap a 26-all stalemate.
Fitzpatrick also slotted a penalty kick in front of the posts from outside the 22-metre line on the second-last play of the match for the final nail in the coffin.
“I don’t want to say we were worried in the first half, but we knew we were in a game for sure. We just kind of pulled up our socks in the second half and scored a few quick tries, and got ourselves back in the game,” Jarvis said of SARFC down in the dumps trailing 21-12 after 40 minutes before cranking it up.
The week before in Sherwood Park, the Labatt’s Cup provincial champions roared back from a 14-point deficit to defeat the Strathcona Druids 22-19 on Fitzpatrick’s tie-breaking penalty kick with 10 minutes remaining.
“It’s a little bit of a tale of our team. Sometimes we come out a little bit too flat,” said Nathan Yue, a scrappy flanker, of the slow starts that turn into fast finishes. “Moving forward, it’s going to be about showing up ready to play because teams are going to take advantage of the fact that we’re not making the tackles, we’re not there on the defensive line and we’re making silly mistakes.”
The third consecutive victory, after falling short 20-18 to the Lep/Tigers (1-3) on the last play in the May 25 match and 32-29 to the LA Crude (2-2), has SARFC in the thick of things along with the Druids (3-1) and Nor’Westers (3-2) for qualification in the north/south interlocking fixtures with two matches remaining. The top three teams in the north leg of the first round join three south teams in the next round to determine the playoff pairings, culminating in the Sept. 28 provincial final.
“Keep pounding away every week and keep getting better,” was the message head coach Jeremy Kyne delivered in the post-game huddle. “This big win today gives us an opportunity to stay in the race and we’ll keep moving forward.”
SARFC closes out the seeding matches at home against the Crude on July 5 at 7 p.m. and the Nor’Westers on July 13 at 4 p.m.
“Our fate is in our hands if we keep winning so that’s going to be the easiest way to get in. We’re going to try to not leave it up to anybody else to get in,” Jarvis said. “We’ve got a bit of a revenge game against Leduc and the Nor’Westers are always our big rivals so if those two games can’t up our intensity then nothing will.”
SARFC is trending in the right direction after the less-than-stellar start to the season.
“We’re getting better every week, but it’s not where we need to be to win the provincial championship that’s for sure,” Yue said of SARFC's quest of capturing the fifth Labatt’s Cup in six years and the sixth since 2010.
Kyne elaborated on the process facing the rebranded Great Firsts.
“We have all the tools, but mentally we’re just not quite there. It’s shoulders up stuff from here on in with how we play together. Off the field we love each other and we get along great and it’s awesome, but how do we do it within the white lines to the point where guys feel comfortable making mistakes, they’re comfortable making decisions and win or lose we do it together. We won today, but we played in little fractions of groups. We’ve got to work out how to play together,” Kyne told the players. “And then the man-to-man stuff, like missing tackles, is not acceptable. If you’ve got a hand on a guy then you probably have got a shoulder on him and the game of rugby is about being physical and dominating the guys at the contact point so there are things to work on.”
The rematch against the Clan (1-3), the team SARFC whipped 62-19 in the June 8 home opener, started off with a try under the posts by Joe Casella and Fitzpatrick’s conversion in the fifth minute. A Clan penalty followed by a SARFC lineout deep in enemy territory led to a key pass by Luke (Aussie) Richardson during an overlap sequence to the left for Casella to trot into the try area.
Led by their heavy-set forward pack, the Clan strung together three converted tries, basically on brute strength, during a 13-minute span to make it 21-7 with eight minutes left until the break.
A sin-bin infraction to Ben Miller, a mild-mannered forward, also put the SARFC behind the eight-ball late in the half. However, Fitzpatrick’s try to the corner, three minutes after the Clan’s third score of the half, was huge. A steal by Cam Larson and a cheeky pass by Duncan Maguire contributed to the much-needed try to close the gap at 21-12. Fitzpatrick’s difficult conversion was unsuccessful.
“We came out a little bit flat in the first 40 minutes,” said Yue, stating the obvious. “The Clan, they’re a big, physical team, which is their key strength. You saw what Colby (Franko) their eight-man was doing along with the rest of them. They were making us look like boys for the first 40. There was a little bit of negativity and chippiness out there as well, but Jeremy tried to keep us positive and after the half we kind of settled down and got our composure back.
“We were lucky to squeeze out the win obviously, but going forward, especially after this bout, we have to keep together a little bit tighter than that.”
Three minutes into the second half, SARFC was back at full strength with Miller’s release from the penalty box behind the posts and not even the hayfield that is the Clan’s home pitch could slow down the rampaging firsts.
“There were a few guys that had just big runs and big tackles, and that kind of brought our energy up and we just went from there,” Jarvis said.
Casella’s second try under the posts, highlighted by the inside-centre’s catch while spinning around to accept the ball in front of the five-metre line after gusto running by Jarvis and Robert Blunden bulldozing into contact, was followed by another clutch kick by Fitzpatrick on the conversion to tighten the gap to 21-19 in the 51st minute.
A few minutes later, a lineout steal by Blunden around the Clan’s 40-metre line, an enthusiastic run into contact by second-half sub Lawrence Ross and a nifty Casella pass paved the way for Austin Mazzolini to weave his way past several defenders for the go-ahead try that Fitzpatrick converted to put SARFC on top by five points.
With 13 minutes to go, the Clan scored off a scrum with a try in the corner to knot it at 21, but the conversion missed the mark.
It was on the ensuing kickoff to the Clan that Yue described as the “big turning point in the match” with the revved-up Orrin Farries reeling in the high ball with a leaping catch in space and the out-of-gas Clan caught flat-footed.
“It was just that burst of energy that gave us that good forward ball and got us back to playing our St. Albert rugby, that attacking kind of game with the ball going forward. That was a big moment for us,” said Yue, 23, a high school rugby product of the Paul Kane Blues. He played the last two years for the Victoria Vikes, last year’s U SPORTS bronze medallists and 2018 silver medallists, as a prop and flanker
Jarvis, 32, continued his try-a-game scoring pace to put SARFC on top for good with his fifth score during the team’s three-game winning streak on another splendid play by Casella, the man of the match.
“We just got an overlap on the outside and Joe recognized it and just threw a skip pass to me. I broke a tackle or two and I was over the line,” said the former fifth-year tailback and MVP of the 2010 Alberta Golden Bears.
