Help Our Cause

No game report or score for the Rich-Lions from the weekend.

The Senior Men were on their travels again, this time out to Chilliwack. The team were low on numbers again, with a few forwards having to play in the back line. This game was billed as a playoff decider for both teams. 

Pre-game the Coach asked that we not give the home team a 20 point start before being come back heroes again. He got what he wanted with us only giving away a 14 point lead this week before we started to play! Starters Jon T and Chris H came off very early on with injuries, so Sela and Shane came on to make their mark on the game. On the 20 minute mark a quick tap penalty by Naps in the CHWK 22m, which sucked in most of their defence allowed the pass out to Sike who bounced down for our first try. The restart was tapped back by CHWK and Naps ran in behind them, used his soccer skills to dribble past a defender and set off for the corner, a final hand off then Naps touched down for try #2. Within 5 minutes though CHWK had touched down for a try again. After more CHWK pressure and some frantic defence, a goal line turnover by Garbe and we made it back up the field for Naps to land a 35m penalty to get us back in the game again. A passage of offloads and good hits ups resulted in a long miss pass out, to a 3 person overlap that Will B scooped up and he slid in for our 3rd try, all in the same corner of the field. Half time was 18-19 for CHWK. We know we are a stubborn team that will not go away in games. We were tiring but we knew that we were in the CHWK heads and our chances would come in the 2nd half. Early in the 2nd half we had a scrum on halfway. Sela made himself felt with a big crash ball followed by Brett ducking under a head shot on the wing, the ball came back across the field for another Sela slam before Naps and Garbe put Sike away for his 2nd try on the opposite wing, great edge to edge play. Naps nailed the conversion and now we were ahead for the first time. Both teams were tiring now and there were a huge number of scrums from knock-ons by both teams. A number of penalties put us back in our 22m, the play went from one side of the field and back and the CHWK #2 found a gap left by a lazy defender and ran in to score at the posts. 7 minutes to go and we were down by 1 point. Sela was spent so on came Shaggy to make his mark. CHWK had a chance to stretch their lead with a penalty, but the kick didn't find the mark and we were still in the game. From a midfield scrum, Naps ran past and around 5 defenders to score but the ref called a knock-on and goal line drop out. From the kick out Jon T caught the ball and ran it back to the 22m, Shane got a surprise pass followed by a CHWK high tackle to give us the penalty. An injury to a CHWK player stopped play for a while, but Naps drilled the kick to put us up by 2 points with 3 minutes to play. Another knock-on, another scrum, last play called. A penalty, a kick, a lineout, last play called again. A steal by Gretzky, a tap down to Mark and a pass to someone off the field and time was finally up. A bonus point win for the good guys but the 2 points for CHWK keep them in with a playoff shout still. Another gut check game, another win against the odds, another 2 games to go. The last 2 games will decide who we play in the playoffs, 2 wins will save us from a long trip to Kamloops in the first round. We have proved that we can score but defence needs to tighten up, our scrum need to be dominating again and more bodies are needed so we can make our mark in the playoffs.

 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.