Spain U18s Hand EIRA Boys a Humbling Loss
Spain U18s Hand EIRA Boys a Humbling Loss
The Eagle Impact Rugby Academy boys U18 team in tour in Spain was handed a rather humbling lesson in playing rugby at pace and with power as they lost big to the Spanish U18 team.
After a warmup win and a victory over the Portuguese national U18 team, the EIRA side was looking forward to making a showing against a Spain team that had enjoyed a lot more time together than had Portugal.
But some issues in their lineout and some dropoffs in performance—namely, tackling execution—turned the game into a 95-8 rout for the hosts.
“It was a huge lesson for us,” said Head Coach Salty Thompson. “Very humbling. Certainly out timing was off in the lineout, Our scrum was OK, but they played at a pace that we struggled to keep up with. They just moved the ball really well and while against Portugal, we managed to defend for 13 phases, against Spain they played so quick that they scored within the first minute.”
The game, as had other games on the tour, was split into four 20-minute periods. The teams involved all agreed to field similar levels on their depth chart. All of this worked out well, but there were two issues with this plan when EIRA and Spain played: 1) EIRA only had 23 players available for the match, so they really didn’t make many changes regardless, and 2) Spain’s depth is outstanding.
“There is really not much of a gap between their front-line players and the next level,” said Thompson.
One of the reasons for this is that Spain has a national training center where all of their top players go, and also the center is a favorite destination for various senior international teams to train somewhat away from the public eye. So many of these players get regular exposure to the international level.
Despite the big loss, there were some bright spots. James Rose, Marco Lapierre, Cadden, late pickup Vince Jacoby, and some others all showed some flashes, but clearly this was a contest in which the team performance wasn’t at the level of their opposition.
Still, it was. a very good learning opportunity for the players.
"This is going to help us all," said Thompson. "And that's why we keep coming back to Spain."
