Irish Canadian Rugby Club 44 - Markham RFC 23
26 / 06 / 03
League

Irish Canadians moved back atop the Marshall Division with a comprehensive 44-23 victory at Markham on Thursday night. The Irish, 5-0 and 23 points, now lead second place Oakville by two points in the early stages of the league season.

Markham, who came in to the game with only one defeat and wins over York and Cru, led 9-5 after half an hour on three Kevin Pullen penalties against a Brad Boss try, but the Irish tallied 13 points in the last 10 minutes of the first half against the wind to take the lead for good.

A Boss penalty cut the Markham lead to 9-8; then Jason Verstraten (who ran brilliantly all night) started carving the grey defence apart, this time slicing through to dish off to Konrad Nikkel to score to put the Irish up.  Markham then chose unwisely to try to kick past giant Irish centre Mike Brown, whose charge down gave the greens an 18-9 halftime lead.

The second half saw the Irish execute the game plan of kicking to the panic corner repeatedly, and Markham spent most of the half pinned in their 22.  Seb Orsi scored off a drive to make it 25-9; Markham came back, sending the wing away only to be tackled by Len Jean Pierre short of the line; referee David Steele, seeing a different angle, awarded a penalty try for a high tackle to cut the Irish lead to 25-16.

The wind, heat and pressure proved too much for the home side, however, as Steve Conlon, Verstraten and Jean Pierre touched down in short order to run the Irish account to 44-16; Ryan Addison barged over on the games' final play to cut the margin to 44-23.

"We executed the game plan very well," said Irish coach Mark Winokur, "we wanted to take Addison, Millar, Jorgenson and the rest of the pack out of the game, and pounding it behind them again and again made them try to run out of their 22; they were not real successful with that."

The win completes a three game sweep of Markham, as the development side ran out 37-20 winners on Saturday, as did the thirds, 26-15 winners.  The first team game was postponed by the Toronto Super League trip to the Maritimes last weekend.

Next up is an unusual Thursday encounter with third place Beach at Fletchers; all three teams will play at 7 pm on different pitches, at the request of the Beach, who have their annual volleyball tournament on Saturday.