Brit - Lions - Alumni Day is back

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The Rich-Lions had a home game in Richmond against the Rowers. They dropped a 20-5 loss to the Vancouver team.

The Senior Men were once again on our travels.  This time a shorter trip up Burnaby Mountain to play SFU. The team numbers improved for this game, with a 23 turning up for the game against the students. 

We expected a good performance against a team lower down in the standings that we had not yet played this season. 

A good start led to Gretzky grabbing a SFU knock-on, the ball went out to Kyle who offloaded to Naps. Naps then fired a 15m no look, behind the back pass to Will who did the draw and pass to Ty who beat his man and touched down in the corner. The next score came soon after from a catch and drive off a 5m lineout, Garbe broke off the back of the maul and popped a pass to Malcolm who ran through 2 defenders to score. We kept the pressure on and had a try disallowed after Garbe ran over a SFU defender. Somehow we got a 5m scrum from this, the ball came out to Naps who danced between 2 dazzled defenders to score under the posts. SFU managed to put on some pressure and won a scrum on our 40m. The #9 picked blind but got held up, Gretzky ripped the ball away on our 22m followed by a pop pass to Naps who then ran the length of the field to score again. Half time was 26-0 for us. 

SFU were fighting hard still, some weak attempts to tackle on our 40m allowed an offload and an easy run in from half-way for the first SFU score. More pressure from us early in the 2nd half resulted in a tap penalty by Sike in the SFU 22m zone. Garbe got stopped on the 5m, Zach got stopped on the 5 as well then a miss pass out by Naps to Ty who got stopped at the 1m mark but Sike was there to pick and dive over to score in the corner. Not long after the restart we had a lineout on our 40m, 4 passes to the opposite edge had us at the SFU 40m line, Sike ran it up to the 22m and fed Duncan, from the ruck a long pass out to Garbe, another long pass to Naps on the 22 and he jogged past 4 defenders to score once again. We were keeping the pressure on SFU and after forcing them back to a 5m lineout in their end a blocked clearing kick landed at Naps on the 22m. Quick passes to Malcolm and Zach allowed Sike to come around and score in the corner again. SFU were still fighting for every inch of the field. They made it into our half but gave away a 20m penalty that was kicked into the 22 for a 5m lineout. A catch and drive followed by a hit up by Malcolm gave Zach time to see Naps unmarked on the blind side and a 15m pass out allowed Naps to step around a sliding defender and touch down in the corner. We had emptied our bench by now to get everyone game time but there was still a fair bit of time left to play. This was to be our last score of the day but SFU were not done. A yellow card to Naps in our 22m and SFU played a quick tap penalty, 5 scrambling phases later, with play going across the field and back again, ended with a pop pass to the prop on the wing who carried Sike over the line to score. Every tackle and score was loudly cheered by the SFU home support and they had more to come. Our lineout on the SFU 40m was stolen and after a pass out to their #10 standing on his own 22 we allowed him to run past 2 soft tacklers and out pace our last defender to score, to the joy of their noisy fans in the home corner. A few minutes were left but that was to be the last score and the game finished 50-19 for the good guys.

Lots of good effort, eight tries scored, 30 points for Naps and game time for 23 players. Should we have prevented SFU scoring 3 tries, most definitely, especially the long distance ones, but the bonus point win was our goal and it was achieved fairly easily. A rare home game and our Alumni Day for us next week to finish off the regular season against Kelowna. This could be the first of back to back games against the Interior team as it looks like we will be travelling to them for the playoff quarter final game on April 12th.

 We now have Minis, Junior Boys, Junior Girls, Senior Men and Senior Women running at John Oliver Park. We have grown from less than 60 club members in 2023 to almost 140 members so far in 2024.

The Junior Boys had 60+ players for the U16 & U18 teams who competed in a successful fall season. The success was down to our coaches Brandon Bloomfield (Grandview Grizzlies) ,Kelvin Paddle (DSS) and Wayne Davis providing high quality instruction to a group of players who only wanted to be better. It will be exciting to see how much the fall club season will improve all the local High School rugby teams were are now affiliated with. 

Rugby in Delta is on the start of a big upswing.