The South California Conference All-Stars beat their Northern counterparts 45-36 Saturday at Cal Poly, showcasing once again that rugby success can come from unexpected quarters.
While the Northern side was heavily Saint Mary’s, and might be favored due to their familiarity with one another, those players had played the day before against Life West, and perhaps were a little fatigued against the Southern California Conference players. However, there was more to it than that. A heavily Cal Poly Southern team showed up well while some players from Claremont Colleges, UCSB, and Cal State Long Beach also stood out.
“The game itself was a massive positive,” said North Head Coach Andy Malpass. “The more representative rugby that is played can only benefit the college teams, and the fact that the best player on the field was from a D1AA team in Claremont Colleges just shows you that players can be identified from anywhere.”
That would be flyhalf Sam Brown, who was indeed very good.
“We didn’t do much coaching,” said South Head Coach Neil Foote. “We just instructed them to go out and play so we could see what they were like. There were some pretty impressive performances from both sides.”
It was a pretty breezy day and the South did a better job of handling it. The North, for their part, struggled at timed to decide when to exit and when to run it.
“We were pinned against our line and when we played with the ball from a platform that wasn’t good, the South stifled us,” said Malpass. “The South had big ballcarriers who did a good job of getting past the gain line.”
The opening try was perhaps indicative. The North tried to kick out of their own in-goal but hadn’t really set it up well enough. The kick was tipped by the onrushing South defense, and that allowed the South to retain the ball inside the North 22 and swing it wide for fullback Nico Doimini. to score in the corner.
Leading the way for the South was the halfback combo of Brown at flyhalf and Paddy Casey from Cal Poly. In addition, Cal Poly No. 8 Ryan Wenstrom was a force, running well with the ball and getting plenty of other work done. Captain and inside center Coby Baker (also Cal Poly) was very good and served as a good distributor as well as asking questions of defenders. Wenstrom was part of a very effective back row along with Brent Dogowitz and Henry Minturn.
All of this produced try-scoring opportunities for effective outside backs such as Domini, Nathan VanDerKlug, and Lucas Green.
