Ellerslie Rugby Park – St. Albert's quest for a division two provincial rugby championship took a turn for the worse in Thursday's first-place showdown against the Nor'Westers.
Not only did the humiliating 40-12 loss drop the second 15 down a notch in the standings, it also hurt their chances of hosting a Sept. 17 semifinal match.
"It's extremely disappointing and, to be honest, it's a huge eye-opener. Some of these players need to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves if they really want to win this provincial championship because we've put ourselves in a tough semifinal now," said an exasperated David Owen after clearing his voice during an animated and lengthy post-game team huddle following St. Albert's second loss in 10 games.
St. Albert (8-4) will scrum down against the 2010 provincial champions, the Leduc Crude (7-4), in the opening playoff round. In league play, both teams were victorious at home: 24-13 in St. Albert and 41-29 in Leduc.
If the Crude beats Grande Prairie (3-8) on the road next weekend, they will secure home-field advantage against the seconds. Leduc hasn't lost a home game in more than two years.
"We needed to play that semifinal at home and that's what we were going for," Owen said. "Honestly, until tonight, I didn't see any reason why we couldn't do it, but it became evident after 10 minutes we weren't in the game and we didn't have any urgency to get into the game. The usual heart and effort didn't feel like it was there. We got beaten by a far better team."
The Nor'Westers (8-3) had a score to settle after letting a win slip away in the 39-32 loss in St. Albert on Aug. 20. They led 14-0 after 13 minutes, 22-12 early in the second half and 34-24 with 17 minutes to play before the seconds rallied with three unconverted tries. Owen's second try of the afternoon with seven minutes to go gave the seconds their first lead of the game.
"We kept our tempo up for the full game today. In that last game, we got up on them early and we then let them back in it. This time, we kept going at them and we didn't let them back in," said Jeff Berg of the Nor'Westers. "We knew what was at stake. We needed to get this win to get back up on top."
The Nor'Westers have one game left before they tackle the Clansmen (5-6) or Fort McMurray Knights (4-7) in the playoffs.
"This win is huge. It's a good boost for our club. Going into the playoffs we have high expectations for ourselves," Berg said.
Failed to show up
The fired-up Nor'Westers stormed out of the chute with two converted tries against a leaky St. Albert defence before the 11th minute mark and made it 21-0 with two minutes left before the break.
"We came out hard. They're a good side so we brought our A game. We knew what we were up against so we had to step up against these guys. We were one and two in the league for a reason," said Berg, 25, an inside-centre who scored one of the Nor'Westers' six tries.
Slow starts have plagued the seconds this year.
"It seems like, every game, we cough up 14 or 21 points right away and you're not always going to come back from that. When you're chasing the game from 10 minutes on, it's too much to recover from," said Owen, a small but powerfully built runner who was tackled short of the try line three times in the second half.
Down by only 14 points despite totally being outplayed, the seconds pushed their way towards the try line, but ill-timed penalties around the five-metre line kept St. Albert from scoring with under 15 minutes left in the half.
The Nor'Westers eventually scored their third try off a quick lineout ball from their side of the halfway line. They ran hard into contact and broke several tackles en route to the try area.
A try two minutes into the second half against a demoralized St. Albert side sealed the deal.
It was 35-0 when Nick Gies fought his way towards the posts for a try to break the shutout. Matt Herod kicked the convert.
Late in the contest, the teams exchanged tries in the dark.
Parade of penalties
After the loss, the seconds spent several minutes discussing what went wrong and the main topic of conversation was penalties. They took more bad penalties than a junior B hockey team. Long-time referee Sandy Nesbitt had major issues with captain Sean LeLacheur questioning his calls and, in the second half, refused to talk to the standout at eight-man and communicated with Owen instead over penalty calls.
Owen, 30, the team's most valuable player at outside-centre who kicked the stuffing out of the ball at standoff while filling in for the vacationing Ashley Hanson, said the seconds are the most undisciplined team he's ever been associated with or played against.
"You just can't win a rugby game when you give 30, 40 penalties away or whatever it was. We're talking back to the referee, diving over rucks, being offside at midfield — any penalty you can give, it's just legit. We can't keep blaming the referee for bad decisions. That's five or six games in a row now and it's five or six different referees all making the same decisions. We really need to sort out our discipline. It was pretty embarrassing, to be honest."
