It was a tough start to the season for the Prince Rupert Seamen rugby club, but team captain Cody Curry hopes his team learned valuable lessons after playing against some of the best competition the province has to offer.
The Seamen dropped their first game of the season 81-5 to the Terrace Northmen June 11 at the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre field, and while he was disappointed in the final score, Curry was happy with his teams overall effort agains the defeding provincial champions.
“They’re the reingning B.C. champs, and we have a lot of new guys learning the game,” he said. “You learn what a quality team looke like and what it takes to beat a team like that.”
Curry said the game began fairly evenly with both teams gaining good field position. The Seamen were able to advance the ball in to the Northmen’s end, but weren’t able to capitalize on early opportunities to score and put points on the board.
“We came close a few times in the beginning, but we weren’t able to punch it through,” he said.
Curry said fatigue began to play more of a role as the game progressed. The Northmen are a deep and experienced squad who were able to rotate fresh legs into play.
“Once the guys got tired, they started to score more,” Curry said.
The Northmen were able to consistently make tackles and win the ball on the scrums. In the second half, the Northmen were able to carve out better positionon the field to create more scoring opportunities. Eventually, the game was out of the Seamen’s reach, but Curry said his team continued to battle hard. He said understanding how to play through adversity would be important to his team’s success for the rest of the season.
“It’s just about playing hard,” he said. “You have to learn to not get frustrated and how to keep your poise.”
The Seamen’s man of the match honours went to Craig Munroe who was able to break a number of tackles and made consistent strong runs in the Northmen’s territory.
The Seamen’s next game is June 17 against the Northmen in Terrace.