The highly anticipated Friday encounter kicked off to a fairly large crowd decorating Havelock Sports Club in blues, whites and golds. In a well-timed comeback game, the Saints upped their Rugby standards to be on par with last year’s League runners-up, to play some high-quality Rugby and startle, baffle and retrench the Royal Tuskers in the first half. The levelling up was achieved in both attack and defence, as the Saints took maximum advantage of every little opportunity presented to them, to kick down the heavy Teak Door and force themselves through the doorway, which rewarded them with the opening Try of the match.
Joes took the Tuskers’ Forwards game to them by picking, driving and mauling their way across the opposition’s goal line multiple times. It is worthy to mention that Royal College boasts the toughest Forwards attack and defence in all of this League. Whenever Royal attacked with the Ball, Joes’ defence was up in arms with the perfect formations to cover all aspects and spaces, that made things quite hard for the visitors, especially during the first half. Joes maintained their regained form in Ball handling by committing only 4 unforced errors in this game, while improving their infringements count by a couple of notches.
However, Joes failed to maintain the same discipline and momentum in the latter part of the second half, thereby granting access control to the disoriented visiting team, who gleefully grabbed the opportunity to surge past the hosts. The hosts were also found guilty and charged on 3 counts of ‘high tackle’ infringements, that could have been avoided completely with focused training sessions conducted by the coaching staff. It is of paramount importance that these Boys are taught the safest method / techniques to engage during contact situations, so as to ensure their safety. They should also be educated, when not to engage, as and when the parameters concerned raise a red flag at that specific moment in time.
The Joes will have a lighter game when they meet Kingswood next Friday, which they can use to iron out the rest of their miscellaneous shortcoming, before they meet the formidable Wesley outfit in the subsequent week.
Royal beat St. Joseph’s 28-19