Wednesday’s must-win match against the Pirates almost slipped away from St. Albert’s scrum queens.
With first place hanging in the balance, the division one women willed their way back from a 12-point deficit in the first half with 31 unanswered points to lead by 19 before a late surge by the Pirates fell short in the 38-36 barnburner.
“It was a rollercoaster, that’s all I can say. It was just ups and downs on both ends,” said standoff Cassie Peterson after the frantic finish at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club. “When we finally started clicking in we jived really well and everything was working, but then all of a sudden we’re on the back foot and had to kind of gain our composure again.”
Down 19-7, the SARFC ladies rattled off two tide-turning converted tries in the last 10 minutes of the opening half and never looked back despite a dicey ending as the Pirates rallied for three tries and one conversion and threatened to score again when the final whistle blew.
“It was just that momentum and the belief in ourselves. Sometimes we don’t have that belief but when we start scoring it changes,” Peterson said. “You never want to let up, you always just give it to them.”
The lively post-match discussion revolved around what the actual outcome was. The SARFC electronic scoreboard is kaput so players and coaches on both teams were unsure. The referee initially had the count knotted at 38, as did the Pirates and some of the unofficial scorekeepers on the balcony, but upon further review of the ref’s notes it was declared a two-point SARFC win. Head coach Byron Elliott had the correct tally in his notebook, while others, including the Gazette, believed it was 40-38 for SARFC. Basically the confusion boiled down to how many conversions were missed in the contest.
Peterson and her teammates were unsure where they stood on the score sheet after the Pirates converted a try under the posts with three minutes remaining.
“Everyone was like we’re down now and we’ve got to pick up our boots,” Peterson said.
The result vaulted SARFC (8-3, nine bonus points) past the Pirates (7-2, 10 BP) for top spot in the Edmonton Rugby Union table by three points.
SARFC has one match left before the semifinals kick-off Sept. 17 and the Pirates play twice before the playoffs.
The pennant winners scrum down against fourth-place Crude/West (2-6, three BP) and the other playoff pairing will feature the Clan (6-3, six BP), a team SARFC is 1-2 against and the last two tilts were losses of 59-12 July 23 and 57-31 last Saturday at Airways Park.
The final is Sept. 24 at Ellerslie Rugby Park.
“We’ve been up in the top of the standings with the Pirates so we definitely wanted a win against them going into the playoffs. We want to be on the top foot,” Peterson said. “We want to have a home game in the playoffs and the key to that is winning these games.”
The pendulum swung towards SARFC when the opportunistic Brie Gray smartly stepped into a pass in front of the Pirates’ five-metre line off a penalty play by the visitors and sprinted into the try area with 10 minutes left in the half and on the last play before the break a thunderous dash through the defensive line by Kolby Krueger, set-up by a slick offload by Emily Dewitt, was converted with a sizable kick by Kendall Dewitt to make it 21-19.
“We had some key players who were stealing the ball and just doing key moves and that kind of changed the momentum for us, Peterson said.
Kendall also split the uprights on captain Michelle Marler’s galloping long-distance try under the posts in the 27th minute, shortly after the Pirates scored to lead 12-0.
The Pirates drew first blood with a converted try in the ninth minute and Emily, a scrumhalf fresh out of high school, in the sin-bin for a yellow card over a physical altercation.
The team’s second yellow card was issued to the rugged Maddy Doyle five minutes into the second half for excessive force.
The Pirates came close to cracking the try line after the sin-bin infraction but a gutsy defensive stand resulted in a turnover in front of the posts that Gray ran away with past the SARFC 40-metre line and then distributed it to the equally fast MacKenzie Doughty. She was eventually tackled short of the try line, where the ball passed out through several hands for Peterson to touch it down. Kendall’s conversion was good.
“I wouldn’t have got it if four other girls hadn’t done their job either so it’s definitely a full team try. We like to call those that,” Peterson said.
Doyle rejoined the team after Doughty finished off a penalty play from outside the five-metre line to boost the lead to 33-19.
Leading up to the try, Emily was high tackled from behind around the Pirates’ 22 after accepting a pass from the hard-running Gray and SARFC fans yelling themselves hoarse for a red card.
Five minutes later, Kendall capped off a drive off highlighted by spirited runs by Marler, Doughty and Brittany Siewert.
“It’s all about supporting each other,” Peterson said of the offensive output. “The beautiful thing about that is with those long runs and those passes it’s not just the backs going and it’s not just one forward, it’s a mix of all of us doing it and that to me is one of the most special things about our team. We do it together, the forwards and the backs.”
SARFC remains the only team to defeat the Pirates this season and their 1-2 record against the Edmonton club includes the 46-45 thriller July 27 at SARFC. At halftime it was 26-22 Pirates.
“We brought a better game today. They took advantage of a few key things, like some tackles we’re missed, but I definitely think we were the better team playing rugby today and we definitely were the ones taking it to them. Maybe they were caught aback by that but I felt we had control of the game a little bit more in this game,” said Peterson, 26, a second-year SARFC player from the Rockers who played her high school rugby with the Strathcona Lords.
The next match is Aug. 31 versus Crude/West at 6:30 p.m. at SARFC.
