The St. Albert Rugby Football Club’s premier women emerged victorious over the Edmonton Clanswomen Saturday afternoon, moving up to fifth in the standings, while the premier men came up short.
The women won in a blowout, scoring 51-22 against the Clanswomen in their sixth game of the season, bringing their wins up to 4.
Forwards captain Sydney De La Mare said the team adapted to a strong wind and played the game safe.
"We just kept the ball in hand and we kept possession," she said.
"I think keeping that possession allowed us to have that many tries and ultimately win the game."
Coach Jasmine Jarvis said the team's efforts to work together helped them navigate around the Clanswomen's blitz defence. The amount of work they've put into their fitness meant once they got into open play they were nearly untouchable.
"Going into this game, we had worked a lot on our breakdown and that was something we performed really well," Jarvis said.
"We also worked a lot on supporting each other and that was done very efficiently."
The game was good practise for the women's upcoming premier match July 28 against Edmonton's Leprechaun Tigers, a team Jarvis says has a similar defensive style to the Clan.
Saturday's game played to the women's strengths despite a fierce wind. De La Mare said that wind forced the athletes to tighten up their plays.
"We adjusted well and we didn't let it be a factor in the way that we played," she said.
"We really played to our systems and it felt really calm even with that crazy wind coming in. Our defence was really good, especially close to our try line – we really held it up there."
Men's premier holds fourth
That wind proved more of a challenge for the St. Albert men's premier squad, who held their fourth place spot in the standings with three wins and two losses after a disappointing game against the Clansmen.The men's premier started off strong but ultimately lost 23-30 in their match against the Clan.
Coach Jeremy Kyne said a lot of passes flew high due to the wind, and the absence of three of the team's more experienced players hit hard.
"We want to play the game with speed and when three of your fastest guys are missing, it hits you a little bit," Kyne said.
"I think this week was probably a blip – we've been steadily getting better until this week."
Chad Monai-Brophy, back for his first game in a while, chalked up the loss to a few small errors his team made along the way.
"There was a lot of individual stuff going on. We've done a lot of practise with structure and set plays, and if you don't have everybody buying into that it can be tough to string things together sometimes," he said.
"But the boys still fought hard and it was a close game."
Kyne said the team played the first 20 minutes of the game exceptionally well, but got away from that later in the game.
"We had the run of the play for the first 20 minutes but we couldn't really convert it into as many points as we should have," he said.
