Charlotte Cardinals beat cross-city rivals Charlotte Tigers 43-7 Saturday with a dominant second half display.

It was a well-contested, physical, and high-quality contest with no quarter asked or given as one would expect from a top-tier local rivalry.

The respective captains, Finlay Mitchell of Cardinals and Jameson Beatty of Tigers, opened the scoring—both going over with strong runs in an evenly-matched first quarter, before Cardinals built some sustained pressure and prop Jacob Eroch powered over to give Cardinals a 14-7 half time lead.

In the second half, the Cardinals scored 29 unanswered points and largely dominated territory and possession. Finlay Mitchell scored his second followed by Man of the Match Kai Campbell, flyhalf Zach Colson, and his younger brother Max rounding it off with a perfectly-timed run to touch down his brother's grubber kick.

Cardinals Captain Finlay Mitchell said "we were delighted, as a club, to win the Royal Cup against Gonzaga last weekend but disappointed with some of our defense in the top-tier match. We corrected much of this today. We pride ourselves on our defense, try to stay composed when the opponent has the ball and enjoy making our tackles."

"We were physical today," added Campbell, "but we started much slower than we would have liked. We conceded far too many penalties so this is something that we'll be working on to correct."