RCSL - Season opener
The Kingstons
midnight last night.
Cheers,
Lowell Kingston
Media Relations - Valley Venom
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/fvru
from Slam! Sports: Monday, May 24, 1999
Golden jubilee!
Edmonton stomps out Prairie Fire
By SCOTT ZERR -- Edmonton Sun
The Edmonton Gold did something in their
season-opener yesterday
that they failed to accomplish throughout all of last
year.
Sure, they won a game during the inaugural Rugby
Canada Super
League campaign, but that single victory was hardly
impressive.
Picking up a hard-earned 31-20 decision over the
Saskatchewan
Prairie Fire in front of an enthusiastic crowd at
Ellerslie Park not only
gave the Gold a perfect start to their 1999 schedule,
it will send a
noticeable shock wave through the league about how
drastically
improved the Edmonton squad is.
The Gold played most of the match with only 14 men
after inside
centre Blair Leach was ejected on a dreadful
dangerous hit call, but
they withstood several early challenges by the
high-powered Fire and
then put the result away with a late score after the
visitors had rallied.
Oh, how times have changed.
"We went down to Regina last year and they beat us
56-3 or
something like that. Just to come back here and hold
tough and to beat
them with 14 players, you can't ask for more from the
guys," said Gold
fly half Mike Brown, who helped engineer what turned
out to be the
winning try midway through the second half.
"There were times in that game where we could have
quit and said, 'if
we lose it's no big deal, that's what people expect.'
But we don't want
people to think that anymore. We want people to think
we're going to
pull this out and we're going to win.
"It would have been special if it had been against
anyone just because
we're trying to gain respect. We didn't have that
last year and that's
what we're trying to gain."
They certainlyproved they're a force to be reckoned
with in taking
down the highly touted Prairie Fire, a big-budget
squad which has
enticed top-calibre players from across Canada and
from international
rugby hotbeds. Even with all of the Gold's personnel
changes, both on
the field and off, they weren't supposed to be on par
with the mighty
stubblejumpers. But on this day, the Fire was doused
and the Gold
were dancing on the ashes.
"It is hard when you're down a man early in the game
and we all had
to kind of toughen up," said rookie winger Mark
Sproule, whose tally
gave the Gold a stunning 17-0 cushion. "We kind of
went into a
defensive mode for a good half-hour and they were
able to capitalize,
but to pull it out in the end is really good stuff.
We showed lots of guts
to keep in there."
The Gold didn't back down against the first Prairie
Fire attack in the
opening minute, then took the lead when Geoff
Mitchell punched in
Edmonton's third crack at Saskatchewan's goal-line
stand. David
Sproule made it 10-0 before his 18-year-old twin
brother found the
end zone.
The Prairie Fire got within two early in the second
stanza before a trio
of Strathcona Druids combined for a critical score. A
straight-ahead
dash by Luis Medele led to Brown's romp down the wing
which had
the Fire in full reverse. Co-captain Brent Gallagher
pulled the ball out
of a pile and burst across the line to put Edmonton
in front 22-15.
Saskatchewan closed the gap to 24-20 and looked to
threaten for its
first lead of the match before Medele crashed through
a wall of
defenders and dumped the ball off to Mark Cannon, who
put a proper
finish on a shimmering Gold victory with a
three-metre dive under the
goalposts.
"Perfect ... perfect," smiled Gold head coach
Richard Adams, his
voice nearly gone after two hours of shouting
instructions and
encouragement. "Game 1, in front of big home crowd,
we wanted to
prove that we could play, that we picked the right
guys - and just
rewards for the work.
"We said right from the start that the key to
winning at this level is
defence so we concentrated probably 60 per cent, if
not more, on
defence in our work and it showed. We were able to
keep them out
just by working the defence and sticking with the
systems and making
the tackles."
The momentum established by the win certainly gives
the Gold a lift
heading into its first away game of the schedule - a
match-up with the
Manitoba Buffalo on Saturday.
GOLDEN MOMENTS:
Blair Leach's debut was a short-lived but memorable
one. The
onetime prospect for the New Zealand under-23 team
was sent off
before the match was 15 minutes old when he delivered
a thunderous
rib-cracking hit on Fire fullback Mark Blumensaat.
"(The referee) called it intent to injure," said
Leach, who would never
have been fingered for such a blow back home. "The
game's all about
hitting so I don't understand it myself. A shattered
day with that call."
Mark Cannon hit three converts for the Gold while
Fire counterpart
Ed Fairhurst had a miserable day going 0-for-4 ...
The Junior Gold, on
tries by Kent Plewes, Jay Magee and Aaron Dyck plus
two converts
by Randy Nyroll, downed the under-21 Prairie Fire
19-10.