Our Montfort Rugby Under-14 Giants were invited by the Singapore Cricket Club to take part in the prestigious SCC 7s at the hallowed turf of the Padang on Saturday 8th March 2008. We were given only two days notice to prepare for this tournament and certainly did not disappoint.
Montfort was placed in Pool A together with local powerhouse St. Andrew's Sec, Australian International School, Pioneer Sec, Greenridge Sec and Bedok Town.
Pool B consisted of ACS (Independent), ACS (Barker Road), Lycee Francais Singapour (French School), St. Joseph's Institution and United World College.
At the end of Pool round robin matches, the top in two of each Pool will advance to the Cup Section of the Competition and the 3rd and 4th in each Pool will advance to the Bowl Section of the Competition.
Montfort started their pool matches with a 0-22 loss to St. Andrew's. The run of bad luck continued with a 0-14 loss to Bedok Town. But our Montfortian Giants did not give up and turned around their campaign with two wins over the much bigger Australian International School (24-10) and the fired-up Greenridge Sec (12-7). We lost narrowly against local top-4 team Pioneer Sec in our final pool match. But because of results in the other Pool matches, our Montfortian Giants finished in the top four to qualify for the Bowl Semi-Finals.
In a hard-fought we lost by two tries to United World College. It was a gritty performance by our Giants and they left the pitch to a warm applause from the crowd who knew we had given the expat UWC a hard-fight. We also managed to keep the rampaging UWC shackled in the second-half.
Despite losing in the semi-finals, we are proud to say that we are now among the top eight of the local and expat under-14 teams in Singapore.
Our Under-14 Giants who played in this tough SCC 7s campaign were:
1) Calvin Lim - Captain
2) Mukhlis
3) Nabil
4) Ahmad Danial
5) Harish Pundey
6) Jonathan Lim
7) Leon Lim
8) Fardhan
9) Ariel Salim
10) Kirish
11) Mohd Shamir
12)Dominic Daniel
Well done Giants. The teachers-in-charge and coach who witnessed your performance on Saturday are proud of you. Here's to a successful National Under-14 Championship in July.
