You couldn’t ask for a better homecoming after two years away from your home turf.
The St. Albert Rugby Football Club’s second-division women blew the Parkland Sharks out of the water 81-5 in their home opener last Thursday evening at home.
“It feels great to be back on home turf, and the girls are pumped up as well,” head coach Byron Elliott said. “It feels great to have a base again. We were like the wanderers, almost.”
They are wanderers no more, trouncing their opponents on the fresh turf with an enthusiastic crowd cheering them on from the clubhouse’s new four-tiered wooden deck that overlooks the playing fields.
And there was plenty to cheer, as the women poked holes through the Sharks’ defence again and again, running up the score to 43-0 in the first half, often with runs that spanned most of the length of the field.
Elliott said this team didn’t know exactly what to expect in this first match against the Sharks this season. Although they found success against them last season, they didn’t want to take anything for granted.
“Last year was a huge win for us, but they were a very new side and you never know what teams are doing in the off-season,” he said, adding the Sharks have improved significantly since last year.
“If they keep going the way they’re going, it bodes well for the future.”
The win improves SARFC to 2-1 on the season so far, but a more significant game comes this afternoon when they face the Pirates in Edmonton.
It will be a key match in the squad’s goal to compete at first division this year after winning the second-division provincial championships last year.
Winning the championships was nice, but SARFC ended up in second division after suffering a loss at the hands of the Edmonton club.
“It’s a massive game for us,” Elliott said. “Last year we lost to the Pirates on a god-awful day, and that loss prevented us from going into the first division.”
At the beginning of this season in a team meeting, he said there was a unanimous intention from the players that they wouldn’t play second division again this year.
“They’re not arrogant enough to say they want to go and win first division, but they want to compete in first division,” he said. “It was right across the board.”
While the win Wednesday gives SARFC some big momentum heading into today’s match, there’s always room for improvement – even if only a little bit.
Elliott noted while the Sharks’ defence wasn’t incredibly strong, the SARFC women weren’t always showing the kind of patience he wants to see in terms of waiting for the right opening to punch through.
“They were trying too hard, whereas what we like to do is let the ball do the work,” he said. “You create some space and then exploit that space, not go searching for it. If you do it right the space will just appear.”
He also noted there were some cases where sloppy hands caused a few turnovers, although that seemed to correct itself as the game progressed.
“We were getting too free and easy with it the first half,” he said.
The match today against the Pirates will take place at 12:30 p.m. at the Pirates Rugby Football Club on 167 Avenue near Fort Road in northeast Edmonton.
