The Cowichan Piggies continued their run of absolutely dominant defence last Saturday with a 37-0 drubbing of Castaway Wanderers.
“The theme of the last four games has been a really good defensive effort from the whole team,” head coach Gord McGeachy said. “Castaways is a pretty good squad, so to keep them scoreless required a commendable effort by everyone.”
The Piggies were under pressure early on, and ended up on the wrong side of some penalty calls. Finally, around the 15-minute mark, the Piggies got their hands on the ball, found their way into the Castaways end and were awarded a penalty which led to a try by Bruce Moss.
“That seemed to loosen things up,” McGeachy said. “We got going from there.”
Five minutes later, more hard work by the forwards led to a try by Kieran Lauridsen, and another five minutes after that, Ryan Spooner added another try that was converted by Jenner Teufel.
The Piggies held a 17-0 lead at halftime and carried their momentum into the second half.
Not long after play resumed, Peter Budina kicked the ball down the field and outran the Castaways defence to score. Cody Milne and Matt Melgaard added tries of their own before Mike Rea closed out the scoring.
“Eighty minutes of scoreless defence is a really good indicator of hard work and a good level of fitness,” McGeachy said. “We were winning the physical battle, but our organization was great; pretty much to a man we had the defensive space locked up tight.”
The Piggies will play their final Times Cup league game this Saturday at home against Westshore at 1 p.m.
A win in that game should give Cowichan home-field advantage in the first round of the Times Cup playoffs.