Airways Park – A stoked St. Albert side punished the Clansmen into submission in Saturday's playoff cage match in second division men's rugby.
The Clan tapped out after getting beat up for 24 unanswered points in the second half.
"Those are the biggest guys in second div and we smashed them all day," captain Sean LeLacheur chortled in the team's huddle after the 29-10 triumph.
The semifinal was a nasty, penalty-plagued affair between the older and bigger Clan and the younger and fitter St. Albert squad.
Several incidents behind the play forced numerous timeouts as the referee and touch judges gathered to sort out the mess. Tempers started to flare in the ninth minute, when Frank Lucas kicked for touch from his try area. After getting the boot off, the standoff was knocked over by a late-arriving defender. Lucas jumped up and punched the player in the head and was immediately flattened by another Clansman. Henry Quaye jumped into the fray and players from both teams quickly converged. Play resumed after the main combatants shook hands while lectured by the ref.
"These guys are probably our most biggest rivals. To beat them like we did, it's the best," said outside-centre Brad Angove.
In the last 40 minutes St. Albert scored four tries with conviction and kicked two conversions.
"Fitness really helps when it comes down to having heart like that in the second half and we had a lot of heart today," Angove said.
After surviving a slow start with rock solid defence in front of the try line, St. Albert gradually overpowered the Clan with a winning combination of speed, skill and smarts.
"When we finally started coming into our own is when we realized we weren't scared to lose. We didn't panic. We started doing things right. We started talking to each other. We started being aggressive and their fitness dipped and ours went the other direction," coach Gareth Scott, a former long-time Clan player, told his players with a big grin in the post-game celebration.
Based on league play, fourth-place St. Albert (6-6) was the underdog against the third-place Clan (7-5), with losses of 34-20 in May and 31-24 in June. The line-ups were somewhat different for the playoff tilt. Rosters were made up of the second-best 15 at their clubs, with both first division teams in action that day in the Alberta Cup quarter-finals.
"The first div stole a couple of our players but luckily we've got lots of talent that can come up and fill in and they did just that for us today," Angove said.
Leduc up next
St. Albert will now challenge the first-place Leduc Crude (11-1) for the J.W. Shaw Cup. Kickoff is 3:15 p.m. Saturday at Ellerslie Rugby Park. The winner advances to the Lor-Ann Cup provincial final Sept. 18 at Calgary. St. Albert's last second division provincial victory was 2007 by the first 15.
"We have to smash Leduc like we did today. We don't want to be [pushovers] like the last time we played them," LeLacheur said of the 45-12 blowout in St. Albert in the last game before the playoffs.
Leduc was an impressive plus-291 in points for/against and was the only team to score more than 400 (Clan was second at 296) and give up less than 150 (St. Albert was second at 264).
"Next week we have to do what we did here and that's tackle hard. We can stick with them if we play our game, said Angove, St. Albert's Golden Crutch Award winner last year who hurt himself in the second go-round with Leduc but played in the 35-13 loss in the freezing rain in May.
This is the third straight year in the Edmonton Rugby Union finals for St. Albert's second 15. A number of players from the third division league finalists in 2008 and 2009 played prominent roles in Saturday's playoff upset.
"This is totally a confidence builder," said Angove, St. Albert's third division MVP in 2008. "It was a little tougher in the first half but we got it together before the half and we never looked back."
Tough D
A stubborn St. Albert defence endured early pressure but kept the Clan out of the try area. In the 16th minute, the Clan broke loose down the left wing with Graeme Scott in hot pursuit of the breakaway runner. As the Clansman crossed the try line, Scott's hit from behind made the player fumble the ball away before touching it down for points. On the next play the Clan split the uprights to open the scoring.
St. Albert got rolling after a kick for touch by Lucas pinned the Clan deep in their end. The forward-driven attack, spearheaded by unrelenting rucking, was finished off by Adrian Taggart in the 29th minute. Taggart, who polices St. Albert's front row, was later sentenced to the sin bin with 10 minutes left in the first half for causing a ruckus.
Six minutes after Taggart's try, a long run down the right wing by the Clan through a couple of tackles was converted into a try with a rainbow pass over the head of the last St. Albert defender. The convert made it 10-5.
After Taggart was sent off, the rough stuff continued as the teams traded high tackles. LeLacheur went high to drag down a ball carrier and Angove took his lumps while horse-collared to the pitch.
Despite playing shorthanded, St. Albert gradually worked its way into Clan territory with some robust runs. Several players took turns inching their way towards the try line but were stopped short of a score when the ref signalled the end of the half.
Turning point
"When the whistle blew I looked into that endzone and saw three of their guys on the ground and none of ours. That's when we realized that they were tired and we weren't," Angove said.
In the 44th minute, and St. Albert at full strength, Angove sprinted into the clear but was caught from behind in front of the posts. Good support led to a couple of passes before Justin Serink cracked the try line with a gritty second effort. Lucas kicked the go-ahead points with the conversion to put St. Albert up by two.
Angove, 20, scored what looked to be the game-clinching try in the 56th minute, set up by a lineout steal by LeLacheur. During the quick push down field, Lucas and Justin (Bomber) Armitt shredded tackles inside the 22 before Angove finished the play by scoring behind the posts. However, the touch judge on the same side as the lineout ball called a phantom punch by a St. Albert player and the try was wiped out. The ball was moved back into St. Albert's end at the spot of the incident and the Clan tried a long penalty kick from an angle that missed the uprights.
"I haven't the foggiest idea why it was called back," Angove said. "It definitely made us angry. We wanted to get it back, which we did."
Jaco Steyn did the honour in the 59th minute on a turnover. The gutsy Scott blocked a kick inside the Clan's 22 and Steyn, a tall flanker with South African roots, scooped it up. He was tripped up before the try line, but put the ball across with his long reach.
Rounding out the scoring were tries by Nick Gies in the 73rd minute and LeLacheur in injury time as the lanky forward streaked in from midfield after Gies drove hard into contact. Scott converted the final try.
