Match Report - Boston vs Yale

This Saturday, the Yale rugby club dropped a tough match to Boston College. The game was played at the Irish Cultural Club in Canton, MA some thirty minutes south of the BC campus.

At the outset of the match, Yale looked to control the action, stealing the opening kickoff and then spending the next 10 minutes in BC?s territory.

However, after failing to come up with points of any kind, Yale found itself on its heels for the remainder of the half. They spent a majority of the next thirty minutes in their own zone and much of it inside their own 5 meter line.

However, even though the Yale defense bent, it refused to break. Even though BC had numerous 5 meter scrums and lineouts, the Yale club yielded only 3 pointsbefore the half, coming on a penalty kick at about the 30 minute mark.

The second half began with renewed energy on the part of the BC club. Some solid phase play along with a rolling maul that gave the Yale club trouble for a majority of the second half resulted in a quick try for BC in the right corner of the try zone.

A solid conversion by the BC winger gave their squad a 10-3 advantage.

For a solid 20 minutes after this point, Yale again dug in and refused to yield further points. However, at no point during this time were the Elis able to advance far into BC?s territory. A slightly narrow field and the inability to set up good phase play also hurt Yale?s efforts to move the ball out wide and find space outside.

After this 20 minute stretch of playing while moving backwards, the Yale club found itself weary and yielded some inconsequential late tries. In the end, the score was 22-0. The Yale club played hard and never gave up, but was never able to establish their type of play and could not find their offensive rhythm, which the BC did at stretches during the game. The club looks forward to a home game next weekend verses UNH.

Although the B-side also dropped a tough game with a score of 25-7, the newest Yale players look to be improving every week. With similar rolling mauls and quick phase play, the Boston College B-side forced the Yale B's to step up their defensive play. Richard Anantua '10 in particular demonstrated great tackling and defensive fundamentals throughout the game. In the first half, theB's had trouble finding space and moving forward. The beginning of the second half was marked by Yale maintaining continuous defensive play. It wasn't until the last 15 minutes of the match that the Yale B's were able to establish their offense, moving forward with several phases and eventually putting Garret Spitzer '09 into the try zone. With the B-side mostly comprised of rookies, the future of Yale Rugby shows great promise with the amount of gametime and the quality of opposition that the newest players are experiencing.