CANTON, Mass. – It was not meant to be for the men’s All-Americans in their premier summer matchup against top All Ireland League amateur club Cork Constitution. With a stacked roster full of the top college players in the country and a gameplan that had them dictating the pace early and often, the All-Americans were ultimately unable to overcome several bouts of ill discipline and fell to the visiting international side 35-27.
The game started well for the collegiate squad as they were able to flash some of the chemistry they’d developed over the previous week of hard training right from the opening kick. Koen Webb, as he’s done at every stop in his collegiate career – from Iowa Central Community College, to St. Bonaventure, and now in a high-performance environment – used some excellent field awareness and his elite boot to exploit the space deep in Cork Con territory with a deep kick that ended up in the hands of Notre Dame dynamo Jack Waterhouse. The visitors, now squarely on the back foot, resorted to foul play to stop Waterhouse from scoring. But they were only delaying the inevitable as AIC’s Leiukamea Schaaf took a pass off the ensuing lineout and bullied his way across the line to put the All-Americans on the board first. Belmont Abbey’s Harrison Tu’isila slotted the conversion to make it 7-0.
The All-Americans certainly didn’t shy away from the physical challenge presented by the Irish men’s club, but they had some trouble towing the line with their aggression and consistently surrendered penalties that Cork Con was all too willing to take advantage of. Case in point, almost immediately after the first score, team captain Fraser Leslie thought he had a chance at a breakdown steal with their backs on their own goalline, but the Walsh Cavalier was dinged for taking out the scrumhalf instead, and Cork was able to even the score at 7-7 after their no. 8 Peter Hyland dotted it down on the back of a dominant lineout maul. It was by no means the only penalty NCR surrendered in a tight spot, with the hosts ending up on the receiving end of the referee’s whistle somewhere in the ballpark of 15-20 times throughout the contest.
“Against these men’s clubs, these D1 men’s clubs, you can’t give them opportunities like that. We’ve got to be better,” said Leslie after the match. “I know this is a select team, but I know Ed [Tubridy] and [men’s high performance director] TC next year will be harping on it: discipline, discipline, discipline.”
There was still plenty to be excited about for the American side, however, a lot of which began and/or ended with Webb. Another booming kick down the field to flip the territory resulted in Webb snaking his way through several defenders and into the try zone to put the All-Americans back on top. Following another Cork Con score to even things up once again, the fullback took a beautiful offload from a tumbling Olli Fussell and hit a perfect crossfield strike to his St. Bonaventure teammate Olu Falope, who was all alone on the opposite wing and trotted in for a score.
All of that is to say it was particularly devastating for NCR when Webb was shown a red card right at the end of the first half after an ill-advised diving tackle attempt with no attempt to wrap.
“The red card was a tough one to take, it really killed the momentum. It killed their rotations and it kind of readjusted our game plan,” said head coach Tubridy. “But in the end, I think it was the discipline that cost us. If you take those penalties out, it’s a different game. It’s just for the boys, I mean, they’re young, a lot of them are coming back next year. So, hopefully, they can learn from it and, and come back, and we kind of kick on from there.”
The team kept battling in the second half despite the adverse conditions created by having to play with 14 men. Flyhalf Tu’isila slotted a penalty kick from just in front of the 50-meter line to give NCR some breathing room with a 22-14 lead. But two consecutive scores by Cork Con proved to be back breaking, and gave the visitors a lead that they wouldn’t surrender for the rest of the match.
“I think we came out straight into it. Everyone wanted to be there, everyone showed the energy, the attitude. Even when we got the red card and it became a game of grit, we were still running the phases, we were still showing that we wanted to be in it, and we fought till the end,” said St. Bonaventure’s Tanya Takaendisa, who helped provide some of the physical edge that NCR displayed.
“I think we knew they were going to give it to us. That they weren’t going to give us any daylight, and I think all the boys were in for the fight, head down, straight into it. And yeah, at the end of the day, it was a physical game, and the better team won. But I’m proud of the boys.”
There were plenty of individual moments of brilliance that kept NCR in the game until the bitter end and that provided plenty of hope for the future. Scrumhalf Troy Heroldt was a bright spot, calling his own number near the goalline for a score when he noticed a distinct lack of defenders on the weak side of a ruck. Heroldt almost scored another on a nifty give-and-go, but it was unfortunately called back for a forward pass. The aforementioned Waterhouse, Fussell, Leslie, and Schaaf displayed an elite level of physicality and skill throughout the contest. And there was a noticeable boost in energy when players like Ayabonga Mkhokelli, Gavin McNicholl, Harvey Hogan, Reynard Boshoff, Ethan Knight, and Gjergji Bacuku entered the match with the team’s backs against the wall.
“The boys battled hard and I’m proud of them from 1 to 38 throughout the week,” Tubridy said of the group assembled in camp. “To me, there’s not much between both those teams. In the end, it’s just a couple of penalty errors, a couple of handling errors that made the difference. It was a pretty tight game, but in the end, the clock ran out … So we’ll take a lot from it, and we’ll move on, and we’ll see how we look in January when we get back together and throughout next year as well.”
So, while the result may not have been what the team had hoped or expected when they gathered earlier in the week, they all felt good about the process and are confident that it will lead to more successes than failures moving forward.
“I’m very proud of the boys,” said Leslie. “We stuck in it to the end. I couldn’t be happier to play with these boys. I’m very upset that we lost, but I’m very happy about the week and about training and about how close we got and about the effort we put in.”
Following the match, both teams came together for a banquet that featured USA Rugby legend Todd Clever— affectionately known as “Captain America” — Scottish Rugby’s most capped wing, Sean Lamont, and Irish players Brian Scott and Philip Soden.
Written by Zach Lanning | Photos by Greg Sabin
