Doug Whidden has again come through and given us the follow report on the premier match.
After a well-deserved victory over previously unbeaten JBAA last Saturday; Burnaby Lake looked to carry on their winning ways against cross-town rivals UBC Old Boys. For the second week running Burnaby was facing a team that stood at the top of the points table.
This game would prove to be a tale of two distinct halves. The home team came out firing on all cylinders, making the visitors pay for coming out soft and flat. Veteran UBCOB backrower Paul White opened the scoring with a fine individual 30m gallop through some porous Burnaby defense. The Old Boys followed up their try by dominating most of the early possession and it didn’t take them long to hit the scoreboard again. With an attacking 5m scrum, the Ravens pack, led by the ageless Kevin Wirachowski, had just too much power for Burnaby to handle and Paul White scored his second try of the day on a push-over scrum. John Graf followed with his second successful conversion. The scoreboard read 14-0 and the visitors still hadn’t threatened the Ravens line.
Midway through the first half Burnaby finally managed to post some points via a well struck Damien Lane penalty. However, Burnaby was still struggling with their set pieces and continued to squander what little possession they enjoyed. Things went form bad to worse when Old Boys winger Trevor Hammond scored his teams third try of the day at the 30 min. mark. Could Burnaby fight their way back from a 19-3 deficit?
The flow of the match began to change with 8 minutes to go in the first half. Never one to bite his tongue, UBCOB centre Jason Hartley had too much to say to one of BC’s top referees Colin Patterson. Hartley would spend the next 10 minutes in the bin and Burnaby Lake finally looked to crawl its way back into the game. Another Damien Lane penalty would bring the first half to a close with the Old Boys leading 19-6.
The half-time message from Burnaby Head Coach Dave Brown was clear, shore up the sets, clean up the lineout, get the ball moving quicker through the hands of the inside backs, and keep the work rate up. As the sun peaked out from behind the clouds, Burnaby Lakes chances of snatching a victory started to look a whole lot brighter after a decidedly better start to the second half compared to that of the opening 40 minutes.
Burnaby winger Damien Lane, showing some newfound confidence, scored a quality try to get Burnaby within striking distance. The momentum of the match would swing even more when, for the second time on the day, the Old Boys would be forced to play with only 14 men as hooker Jimmy Yeganegi was binned for a professional foul. With the Old Boys intent on kicking their possession away Burnaby mounted a series of counter attacks. One such attack would lead to a cracker of a try by Burnaby centre Mark Lavery. After another dazzling run up the left hand touchline, Damien Lane popped up to Matt Young who passed inside to the hard charging Lavery, who fought through a tackle to dot down in the corner. A superb touchline conversion by Lane meant Burnaby trailed by just 1 point.
How ironic it was, as former UBCOB and Canadian international Colin McKenzie completed the final act of Burnaby Lake’s storied comeback. ‘Old Yeller’ didn’t need to be shown where the try line was after he took a nice inside pass on the 10m line from substitute winger Chris Arnold. With successful conversion by Arnold, Burnaby Lake walked away from beautiful Jericho Park with a 25-19 victory.
However sweet the victory may taste, much credit must go to the Ravens. The home team dominated possession and play for most of the first half. If not for some poor discipline and some wayward kicking, the victory would have been theirs for the taking. Burnaby did make the better of its second half chances, but will need to play a much more complete game if their winning ways are to continue.
Next week the whole club will compete for the Palmer Cup versus the orange and black of the Merelomas at Connaught Park.
In the first division we fell to the Scribes 22-15 but handily defeated them in the Third division 34-5.
