Game Report: Sat. May 29, 2004

Mens 1sts
Aurora Barbarians R.F.C. 40 Balmy Beach Rugby 7

In their second game in the Marshall Division, the Aurora Barbarians Men’s 1st team put on a display of exciting and open rugby to score a major upset over Balmy Beach, an experienced and veteran Marshall Division club. Coming into the fixture the Beach had won there two previous games to share first place in the Marshall.

The key to this important win lay in the approach and in the first 20 minutes of the game – Aurora Barbarians almost literally ran the beach off their feet, through a combination of hard, aggressive rucking and outstanding, fast back play. The Barbs scored in the first minute when they won a ruck at the Beach 22 meter line and quickly re-cycled the ball through Rob Ashwood, Dave Ashwood to Ivan Baron who broke through the Beach defence to score under the posts. Dave Ashwood kicked the conversion, a text book start to the game.

Aurora Barbarians maintained the pressure on the beach and played the first 25 minutes in Beach territory, scoring tries from Dean van Camp, Dave Neilsen and Paddy Gourlay to make the score at the half 25 -0.

The second half provided a continuation of Aurora Barbarians attacking rugby with forwards and backs interchanging and the ball flowing into open space. Damon McLaughlin made a timely intervention from Full Back to score a try and Dave Ashwood kicked his second penalty and converted Damon’s score.

In the best Beach tradition, our visitors mounted a couple of attacking moves and 19 year old Courtney Bishop scored their try to close the score to 35 -7. On the final play of the game, Shaun Allen gathered a Rob Ashwood box kick to score Aurora’s final try of the day and raise the final tally to 40 – 7 for Aurora Barbarians.

An impressive win. Saturday demonstrates that Aurora Barbarians have the speed and skills to compete with the top teams in the Marshall Division. We can be assured, however, that the Beach will be ready for the return fixture!

Mens 2nds
May 29th ABRFC Men's II's host Balmy Beach II's
Final Score Balmy Beach 17 Aurora Barbs 12

Expecting a young fit team to compete against, we were not surprised at the level of competition provided by the young Beach team. They outworked us in the first half, took advantage of some missed tackles and ran a couple of tries in to take an early lead. Troubles with our set piece ( scrums and lineouts ) seemed to be our downfall, as we were not able to allow our scrum half much clean ball to distribute to the back line.

In what is becoming recognized as the true spirit of this Barbs second XV team, a great rally in the second half took place, seeing most of the action down inside the Beach 22 meter area. As was the case the week before, that elusive goal line could not get penetrated ( at least under the eyes of the man with the whistle... ) .

Nonetheless, a great effort by all to keep pushing for the win, and draw the score to only a single try differential. ( one try scored by Rob Kruus after a nifty penalty play orchestrated by the forwards, converted by Stuart Hulbert, second try scorer no noted)

Once again, with some more hard work at training, a game like this will have a more favourable result in the coming weeks.