Warriors score 60 in worst performance of season.........

Saturday 20th October

by Matt Aristizabal

In only their third game of the season, the Warriors travelled to Petersfield to continue their unbeaten start to the season. After a nervous looking start to the game Ben Bougas scored on five minutes and another cricket score looked on the cards, but it stayed at 5-0 until the half hour as LSA failed to transfer their dominance into points. Good individual performances couldn’t break the competitive Petersfield as LSA didn’t get out of first gear, but with ten minutes to go to the break Malcom Mirfin began a scoring spree that reflected the difference in class. Brad Hall scored his first 3 minutes later from a penalty after Matt Fendick had been obstructed chasing his own chip, and Fendick converted to make it 17-0. The half’s scoring ended when Mirfin showed good hands for Bougas to score, and Fendick got the extras as the teams went in 24-0.

LSA continued the second half where they left off when Bougas got his hat-trick in the right corner 2 minutes in. Good work from the restart allowed Brad Hall to use put a fantastic step on Petersfield’s center as LSA went 34-0 up and looked to have got into their usual free scoring mode. Five minutes later Trevor Grundelingh scored after good work from Fendick gave him room on the right, and the conversion made it 41-0. Mirfin put to bed some earlier handling errors to use his pace to score after good work from the resulting kick-off (Fendick converted), and Petersfield looked to have given up as Bougas’ try and Fendick’s kick made it 55-0 two minutes later, easily cutting through the defence. Only one more try was to come, as Brad Hall got his pair on 61 minutes as the scrum that had out-powered Petersfield all day drove over the line and the number 8 controlled the ball well as the game saw it’s last significant action. With the score at 60-0 Petersfield began to look to get something out of the game (and the referee seemed to want to help them), but LSA continued to dominate and created several openings which looked certain tries but failed to make the right choices as the game stagnated until the final whistle.

Speaking after the game Bob Crooks was clearly happy with the score, but not with the performance: “In the first half we didn’t play to our patterns or shape, but in the first twenty minutes of the second half we played as we should have- It was the worst performance of the season so far, but we still scored 60 points and didn’t concede.” The KWV man-of-the-match was Brad Hall, who underlined his good performance with two well taken tries.