Winning a game at the Boys HS Rugby National Championships is difficult.
Every team in the HS Club bracket is a state champion, or close to it.
Charlotte Cardinals. We're going to crow a bit here. Starting in Week 9 of our rankings we had the Cardinals at #1. Before that we had the Mustangs, and then, for a brief time, Cavemen. But the Cardinals beat Doylestown in convincing fashion and we moved them up to #1.
After that they did nothing to take them out of that ranking. They went to the Friendship Cup and won all of their games comfortably. They stayed at #1 for 13 weeks and will stay there going forward.
Why? Well really this is where we talk about an excellent San Diego Mustangs team that did brilliantly, but didn't win the final. Why? One reason was competition. Southern California is a great league, but its familiar. There are some things they don't do. The kicking game, for example, is more prevalent in other areas of the country.
The Mustangs needed some exposure to other ways of play.
Doylestown. This was a breakout team this year, and the knock on them was that they weren't particular flashy or varied in their attack. OK, well if you do one thing very well, maybe that's good. The criticism was too harsh, in GRR's opinion. They had weapons and could play different styles of play.
Doylestown was also just really positive all weekend. We ran into them before their 3rd-4th game and asked how it was going. They loved all of it, the venue, the trainer support, the scheduling ... and then they went out to play the SoCal runners up and the Utah club champs and beat both of them. Yes they lost to the Cardinals, but so did everyone else.
Captain Marco Burns was excellent, taking flat ball and making it go forward. Nicholas Miletto was hugely difficult to stop, while scrumhalf Jackson Reilly, flyhalf Jamie Weir, and lock Timothy Fuhrmeister were class.
