Losing the last game before the rugby playoffs by 24 points was a wake-up call for the Bellerose Bulldogs.
The Sturgeon Spirits scored two tries in the opening 10 minutes and led by 24 points before the Bulldogs crossed the try line in Wednesday’s 31-7 loss at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club.
“We know we’re a better team than this,” said Bellerose centre Aiden Zalasky. “We know we can play incredible, we just have to reach that potential. We have to go hard in practice and we practice how we play.”
Both teams went into the game undefeated in the pool B standings in the metro Edmonton premier conference.
“They’re our biggest competition in the league,” said Sturgeon flanker Brady Hansen. “It was a hard fought battle. They kept coming the whole game.”
The Spirits opened the scoring in the second minute and their fifth try came on the last play of the game.
“We had a phenomenal start and kept going. We kept rucking and getting the ball out. We didn’t give up. We just played our game,” Hansen said.
The sluggish Bulldogs fell behind by 12 points at quarter time and trailed by 17 at halftime.
“We came out pretty slow. Our heads weren’t screwed on tight,” Zalasky said. “We did progress as the game went on. We started getting to rucks, making our passes and catching balls.”
The second quarter started with Robert Blunden nailing the right goal post on a penalty kick from outside the 22-metre line. Five minutes later the Grade 12 standout rattled the same post from an angle on the 22.
The Spirits then marched downfield after winning a lineout ball at their five-metre line to make it 17-0. As the first half wound down, Blunden struck the right post again with a penalty kick from outside the 22.
“That is bad luck at its finest,” Zalasky said.
Blunden, who sat out the first quarter, also missed the uprights late in the half.
In last minute before the break, Hansen and Jack Hanna, a Grade 10 Bellerose prop, got tangled up on the ground in front of the Bulldogs’ sideline. As the play moved to the other side of the pitch, Hansen and Hanna got up and started throwing punches. No penalties were called because the referee wasn’t watching the two combatants. Hanna was covered in blood and didn’t play in the second half.
“We had to do what we had to do,” said Hansen, 18.
Down 24-0 in the fourth quarter the Bulldogs pressed for points and with four minutes remaining Zalasky scored his first try in high school rugby. Jake Mentz dug a ball out of a ruck around the five-metre line for the Grade 11 Bulldog to lug into the try area. Blunden added the conversion.
“Jake gave me a pretty awesome pass. I grabbed it, put my head down and went straight ahead and just pushed through. I really wanted to get a try for our team,” Zalasky said. “It’s too bad we didn’t win but the fact that we wanted to score that try to stop the shutout showed how much fire we have in our bellies.”
A multitude of mistakes hurt the Bulldogs in the first-place showdown against last year’s premier champions and Tier I (4A schools) provincial bronze medallists.
“Sturgeon is a tough team and we really have to push hard to beat them,” Zalasky said. “In our last couple of games against Paul Kane [16-3] and SFX [34-5] we were getting away with loose rucks and dropped balls and we still won, but you can’t do that against Sturgeon.”
The playoffs kick off Wednesday with the pool A and B crossover round. The Bulldogs (2-1) host the Salisbury Sabres (1-2) in St. Albert and Sturgeon tackles the O’Leary Spartans at the Pirates Rugby Club. Game times are 4:45 p.m.
The semifinals are May 23 and the final is May 30 at Ellerslie Rugby Park.
The Spirits are gunning for their third premier title in four years for a berth at the June 8-9 provincials at Ellerslie.
“Obviously premier is our first goal and then after that we want to do something really good at provincials, like medal if not win gold,” said Hansen, a third-year team veteran who scored a try against the Bulldogs.
