The terrific thirds of St. Albert are in position to do some serious damage in the playoffs as championship contenders.
The winners of five straight and seven of their last eight matches in the third division are seeded second in the Edmonton Rugby Union playoffs at 9-3.
“We have a great shot. I have a really good feeling about us this year,” said prop Alastair Lillico after Saturday’s 61-15 beatdown of the Edson Axmen at the St. Albert Rugby Football Club.
The thirds finished four points below the Pirates (10-2) in the ERU table with 11 bonus points apiece.
Both teams also secured first-round byes and home-field advantage in the Sept. 19 semifinals as the top six make the playoff cut.
“It’s definitely nice to have that bye to relax and prepare and look at the other teams and strategize,” Lillico said.
League play wraps up this weekend and the playoffs kick off Sept. 12. Possible semifinal opponents for the thirds include the Lloydminster Reapers (7-5), Grande Prairie Centaurs (8-4), Clansmen (7-4-1) and Parkland Sharks (7-4). The only one of the bunch to beat the thirds was Grande Prairie, 33-3 in late June, which was the team’s last loss.
“Grande Prairie is very tough. We know they’re one of the top teams we could be facing in the playoffs,” Lillico said. “We’re just going to wait and see and no matter who we play we’re going to be ready. We’ll be aggressive for sure.”
The thirds and Pirates, last year’s Visser Cup champions in the ERU and provincial finalists, are the front-runners to reach the Sept. 26 final and the winner advances to the Digby Dinnie Cup provincial showdown Oct. 3. In May, the thirds downed the Pirates 25-8 at SARFC.
“We’re getting stronger every game and hopefully it continues in the playoffs,” Lillico said. “We’ve definitely developed a lot with a lot of the strategy in terms of fundamentals quite a bit on the breakdown and the passing, which feels very, very fluid. We’ll have to build up a few things in the lineout and the scrum but it’s going well.”
An extra-large roster of thirds combined for 11 tries, but only three conversions, against a pack-heavy Edson (6-5) side while running up scores of 22-5 at the end of the first quarter, 34-10 at halftime and 41-15 after three quarters.
“It was a tough match. There was a lot of hard-fought rugby in the face,” said forward Austen McDonald. “They’re good hitters and good ruckers. We didn’t step up for the first bit rucking over the ball, we got a little loose on that, but we cleaned it up near the end and started getting our scrums and lineouts and rucks back.”
“It really showed today how aggressive we are this year. We’ve really stepped that up quite a bit and we’re doing an awesome job,” added Lillico, a high school rugby product of the Bellerose Bulldogs.
Nathan Yue, a U19 hooker, fullback Jake Clay and scrumhalf Matt Herod crossed the try line twice and centre Joshua Oden, forward David Emmerzael, veteran Pat Whitehead, and U19 standouts’ Chad Monai-Brophy at standoff and McDonald also scored.
A lethal combination of speed, size and skill highlighted powerful tries by Clay, Oden and Emmerzael.
The savvy Herod also excelled quarterbacking the offence.
“The backs are doing exceptionally well. They’re making us look really good,” said Lillico, 25. “We were really well structured for a lot of our passing. We had a few fumbles here and there but other than that it was a really good match.”
Yue, a kamikaze head-first bulldozer into contact, had fans chanting his name after his second try in the opening eight minutes against Edson.
Yue, Monai-Brophy (last year’s rookie of the year for the Labatt’s Cup premier provincial champions and co-recipient of the Fort McMurray RFC Shield U18/19 player of the year in the ERU) and McDonald (a former Gareth Jones Shield U16/U17 ERU recipient along with Monai-Brophy) were among a good chunk of U19 players in the lineup who have contributed mightily to the thirds and have given the premier men’s team a big boost when needed.
“It’s good to see a lot of young guys out. A lot of guys our age are coming up from the U19s and U21s and having a good time. It’s sure a gear shift from juniors where the physicality isn’t there but here the physicality and the speed is a little tougher to meet,” McDonald said. “Double duty is fun. We get sharper to have more of an edge. You learn how to make the proper tackles here. You can get away with a crappy tackle in U19 but here you really need to sharpen up on that really good and you carry that down.”
Tonight the U19s (5-0) battle the Strathcona Druids (3-2) in the ERU final for the Nor’Westers Cup. Kickoff is 6:30 p.m. at Ellerslie Field. The last SARFC team to win U19 honours was the 2006 juniors.
Last week Monai-Brophy, a member of the U19 Prairie Wolfpack, kicked a penalty from outside the 22-metre line near the touchline on the right-hand side with only a few minutes remaining in the back-and-forth semifinal was the 13-10 game winner against the Nor’Westers at SARFC.
“A lot of guys have come back and are finishing off our last junior years all together and we’re doing quite well,” said McDonald, who split time at flanker and eight-man against Edson. “Everyone that is playing up is really improved from playing in men’s. It’s carried down and it shows.”
A U19 championship would be the start of a long playoff run for SARFC with the firsts and thirds challenging for playoff honours.
“It’s pretty exciting the club is doing really well. We have the first division doing quite well, third division is doing really well and U19s are doing great. All across the board we have good squads, as well as the women’s U19s (qualified for tonight’s ERU final at 6:30 p.m. at Ellerslie) and division one teams,” said McDonald, 19, a rugby product of the Paul Kane Blues.
SCRUM BALLS: The season is over for the SARFC women’s team after Saturday’s 65-5 loss to the Calgary Saracens in the Alberta first division semifinals in the Cow Town. It was 26-5 at halftime and McKenzie Pusch scored the try.
In league play the Saracens (5-1), last year’s provincial finalists, beat SARFC 45-31 in St. Albert.
SARFC finished 2-4 in their division one debut after going 7-2 in the ERU spring league.
Last year SARFC was 11-4 overall as the provincial and ERU second division champions.
