Irish Canadian Rugby Club 7 - Pacific Pride 65
02 / 11 / 02
Exhibition Match

It would be easy to look at the score of Saturday's Pacific Pride vs. Irish Canadian game and conclude that it was a total mismatch. The reality, however, is that the Pride are so advanced that they can isolate one or two areas of weakness in an opponent and pick it completely apart.

Following the Prides 65-7 rout of the Irish on Saturday at a sunny and cool MacDonald Park in Victoria, few if any were suggesting that the east/west experiment was a failure.

Canadian coach David Clark was effusive in his praise for the Irish effort, while obviously being pleased with his current team and Canada's future.

"The Irish can be saluted unconditionally for coming here," said the Canadian coach, "and your effort was brave to a fault. We are simply on a fantastic high at the moment, and seem to be able to take over any game we play."

Indeed, the Pride had laid waste to James Bay 62-8 the week before, and had trounced Castaways 67-5 earlier on-so the score against the Irish, high as it was, was no real surprise.

"We have had 23 training sessions and five games since you played last," noted Pride coach John MacMillan, "and that cannot have helped the balance of the game."

The game began with both teams somewhat tight, but Pride scored after 10 minutes, releasing lightning fullback Jake Osbourne for a score. Irish came right back to pressure, but Jason Verstraten missed a penalty from 40 meters to end the threat.

In what was to become a familiar pattern, Pride converted quick turnover ball into another Osbourne try. Irish came right back with a long period of pressure on the Pride line, but despite coming within feet of scoring twice, could not get over.

With halftime approaching and the Pride ahead 12-0, Irish let down for a brief spell, and just like that, Pride added scores from Stirling Richmond and Aaron Abrams right on the halftime whistle to effectively take the visitors out of the hunt. Tom Maddens' crushing tackle on Canadian 7s winger Mike Daniels would have to stand as the first half highlight.

In the second half, the clearly tiring Irish continued to start plays well, but spilled balls, penalties and missed kicks turned into one long try after another. Indeed, Pride scored 7 tries from stealing Irish loose ball in the Pride half and racing away.

Oren Smiths' superb move let him touch down to get the Irish on the board with 10 minutes left, but Pride added another runaway on the games' final play to end the proceedings.

"I feel that the gap between the Pride and everyone else, as reflected by the scores, is huge-and significantly bigger than the one between the ORU and the BCRU. It would have been interesting to see us play Castaways-hopefully that type of thing might happen one day," said a shell-shocked Irish coach Mark Winokur afterwards as the Irish watched James Bay battle CW.

"In retrospect, and having watched the tape, this was a great experience for us. We now have a better idea of how we can play, and what it takes to be more successful," noted Winokur, "and every single player agreed that this did us a world of good and will be an inspiration for 2003."

The weekend included many other events in the beautiful city of Victoria-few can be stated on family web site, but we did do some hiking, sight seeing and sampling of local delicacies, and all agreed it was a fantastic weekend. Our BC hosts, from Pride coach John MacMillan through James Bay RFC and the Laurel Point Hotel were fantastic hosts, and we hope to see more Ontario/BC contact in the near future.

The game was expertly videotaped by the Pride, and a complete viewing will be held for all Ontario rugby fans early in the new year.