Tag: Utah Warriors

A bye, then many games in few days for Seattle

Let’s pause slightly to applaud Toni Pulu and Riekert Hattingh for scoring tries and to Eduard Fouche for making one of two conversion kicks in the 29-12 defeat at the hands of Old Glory DC. Then let’s move on to what’s ahead for the Seattle Seawolves.

This coming weekend, Seattle has a bye, which means they will fall further behind as other teams in the Western Conference all have games. The Utah Warriors found out what a bye weekend can do: They fell behind the RFCLA in the standings and are right now the team Seattle needs to top in the standings if the Seawolves want to see playoff games this summer.

While Utah was resting at home last weekend, the LA club beat Houston Sabercats, 24-22, allowing them to climb two points better than the Warriors in the Major League Rugby standings – 23 to 21.

Seattle is six points behind Utah, in fifth place, the non-playoff spot in the Western Conference. A win by Seattle and a defeat by the Warriors will not be enough for Seattle to gain a fourth-place spot in the standings; they’d be at least one point behind. They will need more than that, and there are many – maybe too many – opportunities coming up in the rest of April and beginning of May.

Let’s start with the needed rest the Seawolves will get in this coming bye weekend. On Saturday, Utah will play LA, the loser relegated to the fourth-place spot in the standings – the team Seattle needs to overcome.

Starting Friday, April 18, the Seawolves will play four games in the next 15 days:

Friday, April 18 at Starfire against Chicago Hounds, the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference. 7:30 P.M. (PDT)

Rest five days.

Wednesday, April 23 at Anthem at 4:30 p.m. (PDT)

Rest four days.

Sunday, April 27 at NOLA Gold at 1 p.m. (PDT)

Five days after that, on Friday, May 2, Seattle will get a rematch against LA at Starfire.

Fifteen days, four games. Lots of games to catch up, to climb over whoever is in fourth place in the conference.

Also, lots of games to stay healthy, uninjured. Trainers and conditioning coaches, do your stuff.

Seawolves still in the playoffs – bearly

“You don’t have to outrun the bear,  just outrun the slowest  person.”

To stay in the Major League Rugby playoffs, all the Western Conference teams have to do is beat the No. 5 team in the five-team division. Right now, the Seawolves have done that  — by one point in the standings.  Despite the loss Saturday, Seattle has nine points in the standings compared to eight for Rugby Football Club Los Angeles.

Fall to No. 5 in the standings, and the grizzly bear is gobbling down your aspirations to go on to the MLR championship game.

Saturday, the Seawolves fell 35-29 to LA. But they scored four tries, worth one bonus point in the standings, and came within seven points of the winner, worth another bonus point. Add those two points to the seven points Seattle had coming in to the game and they stand at nine. LA had three points before the game and added four for the win and one for scoring four tries for a bear-eating eight points.

The Seawolves once again called on Malacchi Esdale, whose late try won the last game against New England, for a try at the 80-minute mark to come with in seven of LA and the fourth try. Add to that tries by Duncan Matthews, Riekert Hattingh and Divan Rossouw plus a penalty kick and two conversions by Eduard Fouche and one conversion kick by Rodney Iona for 29 points.

To stay out of the ursine depths of the Western Division, Seattle needs a win against Utah on Saturday, March 22, at 7 p.m. at Starfire Stadium. Utah is 3-1 with a 36-19 win Saturday against the Miami Sharks, who are 2-3.

Without wishing bad luck on another team, but a toothsome treat for the Seawolves could come if LA did not do so well against NOLA Gold on Saturday. NOLA lost, 35-31, against New England last Saturday and are in the mouth of the bear in the Eastern Conference with a 1-3 record.

This bears watching.

Looking for another rematch against Houston

The Seattle Seawolves will have another go at the Sabercats. The best way for that to happen is for Seattle to win three games: against Los Angeles on June 22, against San Diego on June 29 in San Diego, and then again against San Diego in the playoffs on Sunday, July 21. And then the Seawolves return to Houston for the Western Conference finals on Sunday, July 28.

The must-win game in that scenario is the playoff match on July 21. Lose that game and the season is over without the rematch against Houston, which beat Seattle Saturday, 28-25, at Sabercats Stadium.

Three of Houston’s tries started from mistakes the Seawolves made: an overthrown lineout toss, a rare knock-on by Divan Rossouw at fullback and a quick penalty that caught the Seawall defense still in neutral. Houston’s fourth and “you can’t blame me” try came with wing forward Keni Nasoqeqe busting through Seattle’s back line.

Seattle’s offense relied heavily on Mack Mason’s foot. Not just for the conversion and two penalty kicks he made, but for his kicks ahead that resulted in tries for Toni Pulu (who outran the Houston winger to touch down in the corner) and Jade Stighling, who gathered in Mason’s kick right at the try line. Even with the Seawolves at 14 men after a high tackle yellow card on Rhyno Herbst, the Seawolves found a way to keep scoring.

The other Seattle try came from a heads-up play by Sam Matenga, who regained his feet at a goal line ruck, saw the ball in front of him, picked it up and dived over for the score.

That totals 25 points. Houston had 28, winning by a penalty kick that can be blamed on A.J. Alatimu, a former Seawolves, who had two of them in the game.

The surest way to a rematch with Houston is for the Seawolves to win, win, win. That will give the Seawolves the hometown advantage in the first playoff game before heading to Houston for the conference final. Assumption here is that Seattle will play San Diego in the playoffs, which is how the standings now line up. But that could change in the last two weeks of the regular season. Looking ahead:

San Diego plays Chicago Hounds on Monday night, June 17, then Houston on June 23 and Seattle (in San Diego) on June 29.

Besides the Legion on June 29, Seattle plays Los Angeles on June 22 in Seattle.

Besides the San Diego game, Houston plays Dallas, now in the fourth spot in the standings, on June 29.

Besides the Houston match, Dallas plays Utah on June 22.

Utah has to win today against New England and then finish their season at home with wins against Dallas and LA. That would give Utah 12 points in the standings (with no bonus points). If Dallas loses against Houston and Utah and picks up no bonus points, the Warriors would be in the playoffs, outranking Dallas in the standings, 40 points to Dallas’ 39.

Rather be Seattle.

How San Diego stayed in Top 4, and Utah did not

How San Diego (4-1-0) got down 17-0 at the half against New Orleans (3-2-0) seemed unlikely. But they did on Sunday. The Legion was dancing with the threat of falling out of the Top 4 in the Western Conference, where you need to be for getting in the playoffs. Then at 40 minutes, San Diego and New Orleans each received yellow cards, and the Legion found their 14 men were better than NOLA’s.

San Diego scored two converted tries in the first 13 minutes of the second half, allowed a miserable penalty kick to NOLA and then added two tries and a penalty kick to win 33-20. San Diego is at 24 points in the standings, right there with Houston and behind the Seawolves by five points.

NOLA stays at third in the Eastern Conference, behind New England (24 points) and Chicago (18).

The remembered Utah Warriors team is not the one on the field this year. In a game with five lead changes and Utah up by three at 68 minutes, the old Utahans would hang on to win. Not so in the present age as Dallas scored a try in the 80th minute to win, 22-20.

That puts Dallas in fourth place in the Western Conference with 19 points, ahead of Utah’s 14. The Jackals have one more game played than Utah, and the competition for that fourth playoff spot should be worth watching. Would the present No. 1 team in the Western Conference (guess who) rather play Dallas, winning 34-32 previously, or Utah, beating them 23-13.

Chicago 59, Anthem 26: Someone have mercy! (But not the Seawolves.)

Seawolves’ next foe: 4 yellow cards and 1 red

Old Glory DC 22, LA RFC 22: In this tie game, the Los Angeles club, the next one on the Seawolves’ schedule, racked up four yellow cards including a second one against Alex Maughan, which makes that second card turn red. LA opened the scoring but got down 22-10 while playing short-handed. Then in the 66th minute, LA started coming back with two tries and a conversion to tie at 22. Not a team that the Seawolves can let up on for anything short of 80 minutes when they play Sunday, April 14 at 3 p.m. Game will be televised on FS2.

Chicago 38, New Orleans 21; I stopped watching this game at the 45-minute mark when NOLA was ahead 21-12 and well on their way to victory. But Chicago turned to mauls to push over 26 points while keeping New Orleans scoreless. James Scott, a huge lock ran in two tries for Chicago (who needs mauls when the second rows run like backs). Nice to see former Seawolves Ben Landry in his usual white scrum hat out there playing as well as Brad Tucker (wish he’d come back). Larome White, who was a Seawolves in their first year, is also with the Hounds.

New England Free Jacks 25, Miami Sharks 3: Besides an early penalty kick by Felipe Etcheverry, the Miami Sharks did not show up in the scoring column. New England, who lead the Eastern Conference only had three tries, not enough for the extra bonus point. With 15 points for the tries, Jayson Potroz added two penalty kicks and two conversions for 10 points for the 25 total. The Free Jacks stay on top of the Eastern Conference with 19 points, ahead of NOLA with 15.

Utah 44, Anthem 19: Anthem ahead at the half, 19-15, but never scored in the second half while Utah ran in 29 more points.

Poor tackling? Or great running?

Peter Steinberg, CBS Sports rugby commentator, insisted during the Seattle Seawolves game against the New Orleans Gold May 12 that poor tackling on the part of the southern team led to their 31-29 defeat.

And 100 percent perfect tackling would mean no tries scored and certain victory — or nothing worse than a 0-0 tie. But poor tackling can have two causes. The defenders might be slow, weak or easily got around, as Steinberg seemed to imply about NOLA. But some players are just hard to tackle. Some players like William Rasileka, Shalom Suniula, Will Holder, Matt Turner, Peter Tiberio, Peter Smith. Those Seawolves backs cut up the NOLA defense to combine for four tries. Smith was the perfect kicker, connecting on all four conversions and a penalty. (Steinberg also rightfully pointed out that NOLA could have tied the game with one more successfully kicked conversion or won if one of their missed penalty kicks had gone through.)

None of those Seattle tries would have been scored if NOLA tacklers had been more proficient, but the quick steps, deceptive passes and well executed plays of the Seattle backs made the NOLA task daunting.

And Seattle’s game is an exciting one to watch. Major League Rugby liked this score enough to name it the try of the week:

But for my money, the Seattle movement that starts at 2:00 in the video below is a lot more fun to watch:

On Sunday, the Seawolves face the Utah Warriors at sold-out Starfire Stadium back home in Tukwila. (5:30 PDT)

The Seawolves had to hang on to the very end to get the win against NOLA, and from the MLR game report on Utah’s win last week over Austin, it sounds like Seattle better be prepared to hang around to the end again if they want a victory. Austin’s Hanco Germishuys summed it up this way: “It just came down to the end. At the end Utah had more pace than us, more passion to get that win. In the second half we had that 20 minutes but then we started falling off.”

For Seattle on Sunday, there can be no falling off.