Royal Irish needed a late try to come back to beat St. Ignatius 10-8 in a non-conference clash between two highly-ranked teams.

Indianapolis-based Royal Irish is ranked #2 by GRR among HS club teams, and Cleveland-based St. Ignatius is ranked #8 among single-school teams. 

Both teams had some good scoring opportunities that didn’t come to fruition. And both teams defended well.

“Our backline in particular didn’t seem to have a lot of time to do anything,” said Royal Irish Head Coach Scott Peterson. “Was it them or us? I don’t know.”

St. Ignatius Head Coach Dan Arbeznik had an answer: “Our defense was outstanding, and we were really patient in allowing Cathedral [Royal irish] to go through their pattern until they made a mistake. I think Cathedral was down quite a few guys from their normal team.  I felt that our guys got the better of them in open play and that we should have secured the victory.”

“We spent a good chunk of time in their end,” added Peterson. “We had some breaks and some good passages of play, but we couldn’t finish. We would get inside their 22 and be on the front foot, and try to do something and something would happen and we wouldn’t score. They were very good defensively.”

So that’s how it ran. Royal Irish probed, but couldn’t get the tries going. Ignatius would move the ball nicely and get penalties that allowed them to kick for field position. But then they made mistakes. The Ignatius set piece let them down, and twice they had would-be tries called back for an infraction.

Ignatius did score a try when the Royal Irish players opted not to contest the maul they expected to be set up - the idea is to bring in only the one defender against the maul, and then it’s not a maul, but simply a tackle. But in one instance, the Ignatius jumper just took the ball, landed, and took off downfield to score.

Late in the game, Ignatius led 8-5. Royal Irish kicked a grubber through the line and Ignatius flyhalf Andrew Baldado tripped one of the chasing players. He was yellow carded for that professional foul. Still, Ignatius withstood the pressure until right at the stroke of full time. From a scrum, Royal Irish ran weak side and wing Elijah Bittinger was there to take the pass and score in the corner to win the game.

“I was very pleased with our defense,” said Peterson. “And also how we battled and pulled out a win. They scored and we had to kick off. So to win that kickoff, drive it down, and score at the end of the game, that was good.”

For Ignatius, it was an improved performance from their loss to St. Edward a week before. Arbeznik said he saw some good things in his team, and also had praise for the officiating.

“Mark Mann did a great job officiating - great communication and very consistent.”

Not often you hear that from a coach of the team that lose by two.