With nary a sub to be found, the Cowichan Piggies travelled to Port Alberni last Saturday for some “old-style” iron-man rugby against the Black Sheep.
While the Piggies ended up on the wrong side of a 26-15 final score, it wasn’t a terrible day, as the players performed exceptionally well under the circumstances.
“It was an awful, awful rainy day up there,” Piggies head coach Andrew Wright noted. “It was raining sideways. It was like it was raining from out of the ground.”
The 15 Cowichan players dug in and did everything in their power to get a result.
“We threw everything at them,” Wright said. “We played well. We definitely gave Port a run for their money.”
Cowichan got on the board early with a successful penalty kick by Owen Wood. Port Alberni responded with a try, and that was all either team was able to muster over the first 40 minutes.
“It was a very tight first half,” Wright said. “We were dominating scrums and we had the majority of play. The weather held us back from being expansive.”
The Black Sheep scored a series of tries to pull ahead 26-3, but the Piggies came back with two late tries to narrow the gap. Peter Budina had the first with a 12-yard run off a scrum, then Cowichan took advantage of a broken play by Port Alberni, stealing the ball and getting in through three or four forwards before Ty Jones finally took it over the line. The Piggies had some serious momentum going when the whistle blew.
“I thought we were going to get a couple more,” Wright said. “But it didn’t go our way.”
Now for the twist.
The Piggies thought the game counted in the Times Cup standings, but Wright only found out afterwards that it wasn’t the case. That means Cowichan remains 2-0 in Times Cup competition.
“We kinda lucked out there,” Wright laughed.
The Piggies will be on the road again this Saturday, taking on the UVic Norsemen. This time it is a Times Cup match for sure — Wright has double checked. The Norsemen are a high-scoring team, but they also give up a lot of points. Wright expects to have more reserves on hand than he had last week.
“We’re looking forward to this weekend,” the coach said. “It should be good. It should be very exciting.”