Walt Brandl has submittted an overview of this past weekend’s game against the Lomas.
From a distance, the game between the third place Burnaby Lake Women and the last place Meralomas looked like it should be a fairly routine win for Burnaby. There were, however, a number of uncertainties dwelling on the Burnaby player’s minds. In two earlier games the Meralomas had clearly outplayed Burnaby only to lose. In addition Burnaby arrived at Connaught Park Saturday thinking that their captain, Julia Sugawara, was unable to play and that the overnight rain had muddied the pitch to suit the Meralomas. Things started to look better when Julia clarified the chain-of-command on the Women’s team and declared herself fit to play. The first half seemed to confirm the Burnaby Lake trepidation. Meralomas had the bulk of possession and territory and Burnaby was depending on disciplined defense to deny ‘Lomas any points. True to the form of the earlier games Burnaby Lake got the only points of the half when Dawn Williams took her new found ball winning skills as a flanker to poach ball at a breakdown and combined them with her previous skill set of a winger to take the ball around the outside to score a 40 metre try. During the half time break the Burnaby inside backs huddled in an “in-camera” session to make some mysterious adjustments to the attack patterns. Immediately after the break the adjustment took effect and Burnaby was on the move. The forwards continued to win quality possession from set piece and break down and now the Burnaby backs looked dangerous on every possession. Second year winger Natalie Rosecky had a break out game, scoring two classic tries, (one of more than 50 metres) and outside centre Jessica Dovanne, who will play for Canada U-19 against Wales, also ran in 30 metre score. In the most exciting non-scoring play of the game, Julia Sugawara came from 20 metres back to reel in a ‘Loma winger on her way to the try line, strip the ball in the tackle and begin a counter attack towards the ‘Loma’s line. The sideline experts were quick to force questions of Women’s coaching staff on where they were getting their medical advice in considering not starting Julia. Meralomas continued to press through to the final whistle with former Burnaby Lake player Jackie Small always creating opportunities on attack and havoc on defense (and irritation with the referee) but the score finished up 20-0.
Burnaby Lake has the bye next week before seeing SFU on the 26th of February.
