Delta Rugby News

The Rich-Lions had a trip out to Chilliwack at the weekend. Chilliwack have a strong team and a lot of players. Our ladies made the trip out to Yarrow, but couldn't get the win. The final score was 46 to 5 for Chilliwack. The Rich-Lions are on the road again this week, they will travel to Crush Crescent to play Langley.

The Senior Men travelled to Maple Ridge to play Ridge Meadows on Saturday. We went with a full squad of 23 players and the chance to get our first win of the season in our final game.

We started the game putting continuous pressure on the home team. The game was played inside the 40m & 22m zones of the home team for 35 minutes. We defended well, strung together multiple phases of attack but could not find the final pass or kick to put points on the board, of course this led to the Ridge Meadows only visit into our half of the field on 38 minutes that resulted in a score for the home team. 

We started the 2nd half on the attack again, this time we managed to get a score, with Malcolm cutting back on an angle from a scrum to score his try. We kept the pressure on but the Ridge Meadows team was starting to make more ground on their runs and began pushing our defence back which they couldn't do in the first half. We defended well but that tires out a team and our attacks were getting less and less successful. We rang some changes to get fresh legs on the field but this takes time for players to get up to the speed of the game and as we adjusted the home team ran in a couple of tries through missed assignments. The frustration of the season was obvious and after some dubious calls and a small tussle RM scored on the last play of the game to make the final score 24 to 5 for the home tea. 

This wrapped up a long and frustrating season, leaving us with no wins in 18 games. The team showed that we can play good rugby at this level a number of times this season, by dominating territory and time of possession in games but points that win the games and we could not score points when we had the chances. 

We will have to assess our team and what the strength of Division 2 looks like for the 2026-27 season. We may have to drop down to Division 3 to give our young players a better chance at success. 

As I have said many times this season, we can't fault the fight and effort our team put out every week, we were just playing at a level we were not quite ready for.

Thank you to our Alumni group who came out to support the team on Saturday, we wish there were many more of you on the sidelines but hopefully next season we can give them something more positive to get behind.

Saturday, April 18th the Rich-Lions  will travel to Langley for a 11.15am game.