The top team in the third division men’s table in the Edmonton Rugby Union scored five tries and kicked two conversions in Saturday’s 29-20 win over the Clansmen.
“It’s a great win for us. The Clan have always been one of our main rivals and we always have a good fight with them,” said prop Alastair Lillico. “In terms of just playing for playoffs they’re definitely contenders and we showed today what we can offer in the playoffs.”
The thirds are 3-1 with six bonus points for 18, one ahead of the Lloydminster Reapers (3-1) and two in front of the Grande Prairie Centaurs (3-2).
The Clan is fifth at 2-3 with five bonus points for 13.
“It’s a developing thing we have going on,” Lillico said. “A lot of our new players are really coming in strong and they’re showing a lot of enthusiasm and the old guys are showing them how the way things are done and right now we’re just feeding off each other.”
Ashley Hanson, Liam Hutchinson, Justin Gilmour, Pat Whitehead and Nathan Reis were some of the notable old boys playing like unbridled colts against the Clan at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club.
Hanson and Hutchinson split the uprights once on conversions and Reis, who taught and coached a bunch of the thirds at Paul Kane High School, scored a greasy try early in the second quarter to make it 22-0 and then subbed off to a round of applause from the SARFC cheering section.
“It’s good to see a lot of the old guys out. Some of them have come back this year and they’re showing the new players how to really get in there and play,” Lillico said.
The thirds dressed enough players for two starting 15 lineups and basically everybody played a half of rugby.
“That definitely helped putting new legs on in the second half and keeping that pace going,” said Lillico, a rucking machine who graced the pitch in the first half as the thirds led 22-0 at the break.
Aiden Zalasky, Kord Smyth and Paul Griffin scored tries in the first quarter and Joel Rubletz crossed the try line in the third quarter.
Gilmour, Zalasky, Griffin, Rubletz and the tough-as-nails Nathan Yue were call-ups for the premier men’s match later in the day.
The Clan replied with four unanswered tries and were denied a fifth on a try-saving tackle with four minutes to play.
“We started off really strong. We played really, really well and we were really well structured,” Lillico said. “We had a little bit of a lull there in the second half but we found our structure again.”
The thirds were coming off a hard-fought 27-24 loss to the Penguins (2-2) in Cold Lake the previous weekend.
“It was pretty much back and forth. It really went down to the wire,” Lillico, 25. “We weren’t as structured for that one but in this game we definitely improved significantly in that area and it showed in the win.”
Saturday the thirds play the Parkland Sharks (2-0) at 12:30 p.m. at SARFC.
The Sturgeon Spirits were awarded bronze for the second time since 2012 at the Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association Tier 2 men’s rugby tournament at Ellerslie Rugby Park.
The metro Edmonton division two champions beat the Banff Bears 49-10 in Saturday’s bronze playoff after losing Friday’s semifinal 21-15 to the Chinook Coyotes.
The Spirits kicked off the high school provincials with a 39-12 victory over Parkland Composite Axmen.
The Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans knocked off Chinook 27-5 for the championship.
The Spirits finished 8-1 (436 PF/96 PA) in league and provincials combined.
The metro banner was also the seventh in team history and the first since winning the 2012 premier conference championship.
A victory Saturday against Crude/West would strengthen the St. Albert women’s position for a top four finish in the Edmonton Rugby Union spring league for berth in the first division.
Kickoff is 1 p.m. at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club.
The top four finishers in the spring league will scrum down in the first division fixtures for the rest of the season and the remaining teams will compete for second division honours.
Crude/West is first at 5-1 with six bonus points for 26 and St. Albert is third at 4-1 with four bonus points for 20.
The defending provincial second division champions were awarded a 20-0 forfeit win last weekend when the first-year Lloydminster Reapers/Cold Lake Penguins were unable to field a full team, so both sides joined forces for an entertaining intersquad game in St. Albert.
