With a 37-10 home victory over Lethbridge on Saturday (Sept. 10), the Banff Rugby Football Club has secured a place in the Calgary Rugby Union Division 2 playoffs.
Banff started strong by scoring 25 unanswered points in the first half.
In the second half, the game slowed, however, with Lethbridge scoring the first try. Banff responded, though, with two more tries of its own for a commanding lead.
Mark Hooper, who coaches and plays for Banff, attributed the second half slowdown to the warmup.
“Yes, it was tiring, for us especially,” he said, following the game. “We changed our warmup and I think that’s got a lot to do with it. It’s stupid that something as little as that is quite a big difference.”
Lethbridge scored one final try near the end of the game, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Banff’s offensive onslaught.
“I was really impressed from the start,” said Hooper. “I’m never happy, far from it, I’ve said that a lot, because I expect a lot from the boys and it’s only going to get tougher now because we’re going to lose a couple more players and we’ve got the playoffs coming up. But we got the result we wanted today, a win at home going into the playoffs.”
Scoring for Banff were Simon McDonald with two tries, Ben McGinn, Ben Callahan and Fernely Simmons, with one try each. Banff kicker Steve Lower successfully completed three of five conversions and two field goals.
With the win, Banff is at least third place overall and will face the Saints (Calgary) in the first round of the playoffs, probably on Sept. 24.
“We’re in third place, so we’re probably going to be playing the Saints away, depending on what happens with our makeup game,” said Hooper. “We may be able to get a bonus point out of that one, and that could make a bit of a difference and push us to second. Either way, we’re going to be playing the Saints; it just depends if it’s home or away.”
The team will tentatively play Medicine Hat at home on Sept. 17. The result of that game could see Banff advance to second and then have home field advantage to start the playoffs.
“Maybe, it depends on what Medicine Hat wants to do, because they can’t make the playoffs and it doesn’t matter to them,” said Hooper. “I’m not sure if they’re going to want to come all this way just for a friendly game.
“If that’s the case, if they forfeit, we get a bonus point, which means we might get home field advantage, depending on results.”
Looking forward, the team’s biggest challenge will be retaining players.
“I don’t know who we’re losing yet,” said Hooper. “We barely had 15 today, we had 17 guys. It’s one week at a time. Even if we’re down to 12 players, we’re still going to play the playoffs, we’ll just worry about that next week.
“We need to work on ball retention, it got turned over too much and too many people were standing off. It’s nothing drastic. The match fitness is getting better. The biggest problem at the moment is numbers, that’s what’s going to hamper us.”
In the first half, a Lethbridge player was ejected from the game for foul language and several times the Lethbridge coach loudly expressed discontent over the refereeing, at one point even throwing his notebook in the air and storming away from the field.
“I never criticize a ref,” said Hooper. “Because without a ref, you don’t have a game, and it’s a God awful job to do. I tip my hat to anyone that does it.
“The first half, we didn’t have many penalties go our way, and the second they didn’t have many go their way. We had to defend for the first 20 minutes. I know they’re frustrated because they’re not making the playoffs, but the ref plays what he sees.
“He’s from Med Hat, so he’s got no affiliation to Calgary or Banff. So if anything he was the perfect ref for this game and I think he did a good job.”
