Gameday report

Both of the senior teams were travelling last weekend and the juniors were back at home again.

The Rich-Lions were away to Vancouver Island to play Cowichan. A long trip on a slow ferry, with a number of players missing. Short of players and suffering some injuries in the game the ladies put in a good showing in a 19 to 7 loss.

The Senior Men were up on Burnaby Mountain to play SFU. We started the game with a good spell of dominant rugby in the SFU 22m zone, which ended with Harry driving over for the 1st try of the day. Quin got in on the act soon after with another long distance finish. We then allowed the SFU flank to break off a scrum at midfield and evade 3 or 4 tackle attempts to score a try. We put the pressure back on and after some close calls Harry got his 2nd try of the day. After the restart SFU had multiple phases of play in our half but some stout defense kept them off of the scoreboard. Then we had a bad injury. A kick from our 22m was chased and when the ball was recovered at midfield our fullback Hassan tried to tackle with his face and came off badly. Surgery is required and no more rugby for our brave #15 this season unfortunately. We swapped around some positions and from a well executed backs move from a scrum Will scored a try with his first touch playing at #15. This was half-time, 24 to 5 for BL. The second half started with a lot of SFU pressure in our 22. We repelled the attack on numerous occasions and SFU had to settle for a couple of converted penalties. This is where Kyle took the game to SFU. He was under the kicks, running through multiple tacklers, and laughing when they finally stopped him going forward. He scored 2 quick tries, driving over from close in on both occasions. Then Dante got in on the act after some good close support play. This is where we saw a couple of events that will not be forgotten for a while. First Shane was adjudged to have been held up by 2 SFU players that put together were still smaller than him, then a heinous error by Harry lost him his hat-trick of tries when he sauntered over the goal line and was going behind the posts when a SFU defender stripped him of the ball before he could score. A valuable lesson learned for the future we hope. From the restart SFU could not clear their lines and after getting close to the line Louai dove over from the back of a ruck to round off the scoring and the game, 48 to 11 for BL. 

On Sunday the U16s and the U18s both had games at John Oliver Park against Squamish. The U16s only had 10 available players so thankfully the Axemen matched our players so we could get a game in for the boys. The Axemen were a well drilled team and gave our boys a tough game. We never stopped fighting to score but the visitors finished the game with a 33 to 7 win. The U18s had a back and forward game again this weekend. The Axemen were scoring from longer range with line breaks and speed, our boys had good line breaks that were held up by good cover defense play. But we were scoring as well with multiple phases leading to close in scores. The difference in this game was the boot. The Axemen's kicker has his shooting boots on but our kickers were not as accurate. The game finished with both teams scoring 7 tries, but we only converted 1 try and Squamish rattled in 6 to make the final score 37 to 47 for the visitors.

On November 14th the Rich-Lions will take on Langley at John Oliver Park. The Senior Men have a bye week.

On Sunday, November 15th the Junior Boy's teams are away for their last games of the season, with the U16 team at Caps, and the U18 team at the Lomas (12.15 & 1.30).

The club still really needs gameday, team, and player sponsors for this season as our field and clubhouse costs have tripled from last year. 

We cannot cover these additional costs by increasing our player fees. 

We also have a few younger, local players who cannot afford the cost to register to play for the club, so if you can help support a player that would be much appreciated.

If you can help the club in any way please contact Andrew Walker at 604-970-2787 or at britlionspresident@gmail.com