Construction started last weekend on rebuilding the St. Albert Rugby Football Club men’s program.
It’s a work in progress as the second division team lost 42-5 to the Nor’Westers the day after the LA Crude clobbered the third division SARFC/Druids 68-22.
The premier men kick-off its Alberta Cup fixtures May 26 against the Clan at 2:15 p.m. at Ellerslie Rugby Park.
This is the first season for the SARFC seconds in the Edmonton Rugby Union since going 4-5-1 in 2014, while last year’s thirds, a squad of SARFC players, and the premier first 15 succumbed in the semifinal playoffs after posting winning records in league play.
“None of the seconds played (Friday) night for the thirds so we’re having a true second div team and the guys are buying in and that’s kind of our motto this year: you need to buy in to be part of it,” said standoff Andrew (Kiwi) Marsden, last year’s MVP of the thirds who captained the seconds against the Nor’Westers.
“It’s an incredibly big jump going from thirds to seconds, which is basically the reserves to your Alberta Cup team so we play at a much higher level,” Marsden added. “The guys at seconds are pushing for spots in premier positions where as in third grade we filled up with young guys coming in and old guys coming out so you could have an 18-year-old scrum against a 45-year-old sometimes and it’s not very pretty but in second div it’s a lot more of an even playing field across the whole thing. These are all pretty well elite athletes so this is about as high as you can play in the Alberta club level without playing Alberta Cup rugby.”
The seconds used Saturday’s lid-lifter to shake off the winter rust without any pre-season action.
“We’re not too disappointed with the loss. They had a pretty stacked team to be honest and a few of those guys will be playing prems all year and the prems have a bye today,” Marsden said. “Our new coach, Jeremy Kyne, is looking to play a more true seconds and firsts so come playoff time if we're both lucky to make playoffs you have two teams that are prepared rather than one team that’s been carried by premier players.”
It was 13-0 Nor’Westers when fullback Luke (Aussie) Richardson was sentenced to the sin-bin for the remainder of the first half for breaking a rugby law with 13 minutes left until the break.
With a man short, the seconds came within a whisker of cracking the try line as Matt Herod, who subbed on as a winger, was hauled down after a spirited run down the touch line.
Down by 27 points, the seconds gave the SARFC fans reason to cheer when Cooper Kenda, the SARFC U18 rookie of year in 2017 and junior B player with the Morinville Jets, reeled in an alley-oop pass from Aiden Zalasky after Marsden ran the ball with pace past the 40-metre line of the Nor’Westers.
“We had three goals today and we fell a little short on two of them but if anything our conditioning is 10 times better than it was last year and to move up from third div to second div that’s a been part of our mindset this year. Under Jeremy coach we’ve hit the fitness a lot more and it paid off today. None of the guys are dying like they were last year so it kept our positivity up which was one of our three key things today,” said Marsden, SARFC’s most accurate kicker last year who was short of the posts on a penalty from in front of the 42 at the 21-minute mark when it was 8-0 Nor’Westers. “The other two were defence and structure which lacked a little bit and the score line showed that but one of our ideas today was to score wide around the outside of them and young Cooper Kendra managed to pull that off on a bit of a broken play. We got to the outside and Cooper managed to score his first try in senior men’s.
“I’m just incredibly proud of the boys for the gutsy effort.”
The Nor’Westers, a 7-5 non-playoff team in seconds last year, looked like a carbon copy of the premier team that dominated the Alberta Cup fixtures as the Labatt’s Cup provincial champions.
“We spread the ball pretty well wide, took it down the wings and played against their slower players,” said Austin Pinnell, a 19-year-old fullback and the best player on the pitch by a country mile. “We were smaller but we had a bit more speed than them."
The long-legged Pinnell scored one try and did all the kicking while dissecting the seconds with sleek runs and clever passes.
“They’ve got some pretty big boys. St. Albert fought really hard. It was a pretty good game despite the score line,” said the U19 Team Canada player in the three-match Northern Ireland tour last season. “We worked pretty hard for it. It helped that we had a lot of fitness in the pre-season.”
The Nor’Westers surpassed SARFC as a club and a half in the men’s ranks after going 13-2, highlighted by overwhelming victories of 57-26 and 51-3 against the firsts, winners of three Labatt’s Cups in a row before the 23-13 semifinal spanking by the Strathcona Druids in the north playoffs.
“It was awesome. It was our first provincial win in a long time. Everyone was ecstatic and it kind of all brought us together and now all of us, including our thirds to our firsts, have kind of gelled together as a group and we're really making sure it's more like a club scene,” said the Lillian Osborne High School graduate who didn’t play in the playoffs because of commitments with the Victoria Vikes. One of his teammates was Nathan Yule of St. Albert. “A lot of teams are probably going to come shooting for us up top. A lot of people have something against us and something to play for, so it will be tough season but hopefully we can grind it out to the end.”
Marsden, 34, believes SARFC can regain its lost glory with Kyne, a transplanted New Zealander, as the fifth head coach in five years.
“He’s the first local coach we’ve had in five, six years and we’re looking forward to having him around for a couple of years,” Marsden said. "The changes he's implemented already, there are too many to list and they’re all positive changes. You miss training, you miss the game so there's consequences this year where that’s been lacking in years gone bye and it came down to the club’s complacency of winning so many titles. Last year was a wake-up call for the club so we’ve changed things.”
SCRUM BALLS: Saturday’s match marked the debut of Aoibheann and Maeve Hutchinson, a pair of junior female players, as SARFC hydration specialists and they covered a lot of ground for the thirsty seconds.
The next match for the seconds is May 26 against LA Crude at 4 p.m. at Ellerslie and thirds play June 1 against the Nor’Westers at 7 p.m. at SARFC.
Meanwhile, the second division women beat up the host Drayton Valley Riggers 93-5 Saturday in the first ERU match of the season. The Riggers finished 0-9 last year.
Upcoming for the SARFC women’s program under new head coach George Harding is the Alberta premier match May 26 against the visiting Calgary Irish at 2 p.m. and the second division home contest May 30 against the Clan at 7 p.m.
