Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Montfort B Div Rugby Lions: M1 Schools Series Plate Runner-Up


The Montfort B Div Ruggers played their hearts out in the M1 Schools Rugby Series Tournament at Yio Chu Kang Stadium on Tuesday September 8th and emerged as Plate Runner-Up.

In a pulsating Plate Final against Peirce Secondary School, our ruggers conceded an early try against the well-drilled and aggressive Peirce team. But a brilliant try by our lock forward Harish Pandey levelled the scores with less than a minute to go. The Plate Final went into sudden death extra-time. With the scores still level in extra-time, Peirce was declared the winner because they had scored the first points during normal regulation time. It was a disappointing end to the day, but our Montfort Ruggers could hold their heads up high after a full-day tournament of four matches.

The day had begun with a 12-0 loss to the rampaging ACS (Independent) team in the first match of the group stages. But the Montfort ruggers picked up the pieces in their second match when they ran in four tries against Northbrooks Secondary. The tries were scored by Muhd Nabil, Harish Pandey and Mohd Shamir (twice). Two of our tries were converted to give Montfort an impressive 22-0 win over Northbrooks. With a one win and one loss after the group stage, Montfort were paired against Damai Secondary in the Plate Semi-Finals. In a robust Plate Semi-Finals, Montfort fell behind to an unconverted try by Damai but our flying winger, Ahmad Danial was able to level the scores with a scintillating run that was duly converted by Captain Muhd Nabil to give Montfort a narrow 7-5 win over Damai.

Despite the Plate Final loss to Peirce, the match had some positives. We are beginning to see the Sec 2s gel well with the Sec 3s and this will augur well for B Div 2010. Our boys were also mentally stronger and did not give up despite going down to early tries scored by the opposition.

The team that played today has the potential to go far in B Div 2010.

M1 Schools Series Squad for September 8th: Matthew Ho, Alvin Yap, Lewis Syn, Justin Seow, Harish Pandey, Leon Lim, Kang Dong Wan, Kenny Lee, Eugene Sito, Calvin Lim, Dominic Daniel, Muhd Nabil, Mohd Shamir, Jonathan Lim, Ariel Salim, Ahmad Daniel and Yong Cheong.