Copyright: VINO

Cedar International School overcame a tenacious Francis Lettsome Primary, 2-1, in the BVI Rugby Union’s U13 Championship, whilst St Georges completed a come from behind win over Cedar to secure the U16 Title on Thursday June 12th, 2014.

The 2014 School Festivals brought to a close the School Rugby Season and was a fitting celebration of the sport that is developing at a fast rate.

Both Cedar and FLPS had reached the final after two tense semi final victories and a whole host of competitive group qualification action.

Cedar had a 3-2 win over Cedar “A” to claim their place in the Final following a 2-0 win over Ebenezer Thomas, a 3-2 victory over Enis Adams and a 7-1 romp against the Seventh-day Adventists. Meanwhile FLPS secured victories over Ivan Dawson Primary, 4-2, Isabella Morris, 1-0, Cedar “A”, 4-1 and then Ebenezer Thomas, 3-2, to reach the Final.

After Cedar came out Champions with a 2-1 win in the final, Rugby Development Officer and Coach, Sherlock “Sam” Solomon noted how much the game is improving at the Primary School level.

“The competition level was really up there and the kids are getting better and better, with the result that wins are hard to come up with. FLPS won the competition 2 years ago and were back, looking good this time around, but they seemed to have a few issues in the Final and let the game slip away from them,” said Solomon.

The U15’s took the field on Thursday afternoon and the best of three final saw St Georges stage a come from behind, 2-1 best of three win over Cedar School.

The first game went the way of Cedar, 2-0, courtesy of two scores from Kendall Davies, but then the Chalwell boys combined to give St Georges a 2-1 win in game two.

The deciding match saw Dylan Moses run riot down the left wing in the first half, scoring twice and giving his team, St Georges a comfortable lead that they never surrendered, running out 2-0 winners to claim the Championship.

Coach “Solo” was not surprised that St Georges had regrouped so well to claim the Title. “They always had a good set of players and it was good to see Joseph pick his team up after losing the first game to play some good rugby and come out winners. Overall the skill levels have gone up during the year and it was good to see both teams moving the ball around from side to side and probing for defensive weaknesses.”

By: BVIsports.com

The BVI looking for a win to get the NACRA Rugby Championship qualifying back on track on Sunday went down 29-18 to St Lucia with a display late in the second half that belied believe and had Coach Sherlock “Sam” Solomon benused by his Senior Players, but encouraged by his young charges.

The defeat made even  harder to take for the players given they had bossed large parts of the game, had been 13-5 ahead at half time and even extended that lead to 18-8 mid way through the second period.

Tom Chapman opened the scoring for the hosts, following up a Roan Thornton drive to the line, picking the loose ball up and diving over for a try.

Rory Thornton missed the conversion attempt and moments later the BVI defense was caught napping as Lenford Eugene ran straight through a flat back line to equalize.

Following a little pushing and shoving, which involved virtually all 30 players on the pitch and resulted in a spell in the sin bin for Imran William and Patrick Dennis, the BVI regained the lead through a penalty from Rory Thornton and then reached the comfort of half time extending the lead courtesy of a searing run from Vivien Harris.

Harris outpaced three St Lucia defenders from just inside his own half to score, but Thornton missed the conversion attempt leaving the score 13-5.

St Lucia converted a penalty from the boot of Colvis Samuel, to make it 13-8, after a dominating spell early in the second period, but the move of the match, at least from the home team perspective, saw Noel Maxwell score the easiest of tries in the left hand corner as the BVI finally began to move the ball across the field at pace. The conversion was missed and so was a penalty moments later and then the wheels fell off for the BVI.

At 18-8 ahead the BVI should have gone on to put the game away. However following a quickly taken “tap” penalty Cyriacus Isadore burst through the BVI defensive line from just inside his own half evaded three forlorn attempted tackles and scored under the posts. Samuel made the simple conversion and suddenly the whole game changed momentum with the score now just 18-15.

Jerry Charles ran through the BVI defense again moments later to make it 18-20, Samuel converted, extending the lead to 18-22 and then to put the icing on the cake, Eugene scored again to make it 18-27 and Samuel rubbed salt into the BVI wounds, rounding out the scoring at 18-29 with another successful conversion.

“I’m very proud of the team” commented St Lucia Captain, Charles “we held on into the second half and knew the BVI team were getting tired. We turned to our youth and speed and got around them to score the crucial points.”

BVI Coach, Sherlock “Sam” Solomon rued the poor handling skills shown by his team “we were doing so well in the first half and then deep into the second half, but St Lucia pressure and some poor tackling cost us the match. When they scored from their own 25 that took the wind out of us and changed the game.”

Solomon was pleased with the youngsters who took part, but also felt the senior players should have stepped up to the plate more “we worked on the Forwards controlling the ball, but after the first phase it just wasn’t happening. The youngsters had a good came, some of the seniors seemed to lack fitness by the end, but we didn’t control the ball enough.”

The BVI has one game left to play, against Curacao, whilst St Lucia moves onto a home game against St Vincent to wrap up their Group play.

Two tries from Matt Holmes saw the BVI Rugby XV to a comfortable if not convincing 20-0 victory over HMS Lancaster on the A.O. Shirley Ground last night, July 3, 2013 in front of a large crowd.

The BVI were not sure what to expect from the Navy team and had assembled a large squad with a mixture of their best players and some less experienced youngsters, but as it turned out the Hosts went into an early 5-0 lead with Ade Haffner finishing off a long period of possession by going over down the left hand side.

The Conversion attempt was missed and the expected floodgates failed to open as the BVI failed to get the ball out wide quickly enough to penetrate the visitor’s last line of defense.

Several promising moves came to nothing as players choose to run with the ball rather than make a more timely pass allowing the defense to recover.

The Sailors weren’t having as much luck up front though with only one spell of pressure in the first half that seriously threatened the BVI. Some scrambled kicking kept them at bay, but Lancaster kept the ball alive inside the BVI 22, edging closer and closer.

After a little “handbags” the visitors got to the BVI 10, but once again the danger was repelled and a quick break away saw the BVI stopped just short of another score.

The BVI Forwards kept probing looking for a gap in the defense and eventually the powerful Matt Holmes forced his way through and over to make it 10-0.

Again the conversion was missed.

5 minutes after the restart for the second half, Holmes made it 15-0 and with a nice cushion on the scoreboard the BVI finally put some free flowing moves together by utilizing the speed of Rory Thornton on the wing. He came close to scoring on two occasions, but was unable to find that final space.

The 4th and final score of the night, fittingly, came from Donovan Staples who went over in the left corner in the last few minutes of the game.

A 20-0 final score line was a comfortable if not dominating win and as a philosophical Coach Sherlock Solomon commented afterwards, they had really wanted more points on the board.

“Rugby is rugby and you never know what to expect until the game starts,” he said, “we were expecting a much tougher fight and also to score more points. Four tries for the whole game was a bit disappointing for us, but at the same time we gave some of the youngsters a run out, so had an inexperienced team.”

Captain Donovan Staples was also a little subdued with the result. “Basically we knew they would not be as fit as us,” he noted, “we tried to take it inside and then move the ball outside fast. But they stuck to their defense well and it was hard to break them down.”