Valley vanquish Scottish to hone in on Hong Kong Men's Premiership honours
Catch the highlights from this weekend’s big games in the RugbyPass.com Hong Kong Men’s Premiership.
Societe Generale Valley all but secured their second consecutive league championship with a bonus-point 29-3 win over Bloomberg HK Scottish in the RugbyPass.com Men’s Premiership on Saturday.
Valley now lead their closest rival Scottish by five points with only one round remaining, as well as boasting a far superior points difference that ensures only a miracle could see Scottish take top spot.
After Scottish scored first through a penalty to fly half Gregor McNeish, Valley piled on 29 unanswered points en route to a comprehensive victory.
“I think focus wise it is probably up there [with our best wins of the season],” Valley coach Andrew Kelly said.
“The guys were really clued in, stuck to the systems we were after and the defence was great. Only letting in three points was superb.”
It took until the 14th minute of the game for McNeish to open the scoring, with his penalty following a yellow card to Valley’s Toby Fenn.
Both sides displayed a willingness to throw the ball around but neither got too close to their opponent’s line in the first quarter, besides an effort from Scottish winger Ben Cullen that came up agonisingly short.
If anything, going a man down sparked Valley into action, with the league leaders attacking with more purpose. Their efforts were rewarded after 23 minutes, with centre Tiger Bax slicing through the Scottish defensive line to cross and make it 5-3 in his side’s favour.
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Prop Grant Kemp was in on the act soon after for Valley, finding the line to make it 10-3. The margin would have been greater if not for the wayward kicking of Ben Rimene, with the usually reliable Valley fly half missing a penalty and two conversions.
His opposite number McNeish had a chance to narrow the margin just before the break, but couldn’t quite go the journey from out wide.
The second half saw Scottish attack with renewed vigour, although a string of handling errors hindered their progress.
“We have just got to execute, we got in their 22 probably six or seven times and out of that five or six of those we turned the ball over,” Scottish coach Craig Hammond said.
“It’s a learning curve for us and we’ve got to win next week and try and get a home semi-final.”
The host’s best chance for a try came 10 minutes into the second half when Marcus Ramage leapt over the line, only to be held up and forced out of play.
As they so often do, Valley found a way to wrest back momentum and were rewarded when replacement prop Taukiha’amea Koloamatangi barged over for a try to make it 15-3.
The margin remained at 12 points entering the final quarter of the match, but Valley could smell blood and continued to stretch the Scottish defence.
Matt Rosslee, who started on the bench, put the result beyond doubt with a try with 15 minutes remaining, with Rimene finally finding his radar to slot the conversion and push the margin out to 19 points.
Valley was in the points again in the shadows of the final siren, earning a penalty try which Rimene duly converted. The visitors finished full of running to show they’ll again be hard to stop in the race for the grand championship.
“For me the job isn’t done, we’re at home [next week against Herbert Smith Freehills HKCC], it’s the last game of the season and we need to win,” Kelly said.
“That’s the bottom line. I’ve always said we need to build momentum towards the final so you just cannot stop playing for any reason. We need to focus massively on Cricket Club. They almost beat us last time so we’ll be up for it.”
In other RugbyPass.com Premiership action, HKCC edged Borrelli Walsh USRC Tigers 24-20 despite losing out in the try stakes 3-0 with fullback James Love slotting eight penalties. HKCC led 9-5 at halftime after three of Love’s efforts with hooker Matt Keay crossing over for Tigers who saw centre Joseph Ikenasio sent to the sin-bin midway through the half.
Tigers conceded two more Love penalties before winger Yiu Kam-shing scored added a second try with flyhalf Robbie Keith converting, closing the gap to 15-13. Love pushed the gap to five points after Tigers saw a second players, Chris Maize, sent to the sin-bin in the 68th minute.
Love slotted two more penalties in the final ten minutes giving the Cricketers a comfortable 24-13 lead before Will Eversfield’s try at the buzzer with Keith’s second conversion bringing the final score to 24-20.
Kowloon maintained their perfect start to 2017 and cemented their hold on third place on the table with a 37-20 bonus point win over Natixis HKFC . Flyhalf Jack Neville collected 22 points with an all-round performance including a try, four conversions and three penalties as Kowloon blew open a 10-6 lead at half-time to notch their fourth straight win since the break.
Comments on RugbyPass
An on field red (aka a full red) in SRP must surely carry a bigger suspension than a red card given by the bunker as that carries a 20 minute team punishment. Had Damon Murphy abdicated his responsibility as a ref and issued both Drua players a yellow, which would have been upgraded to a 20 minute red by the bunker, that would have killed Australia and New Zealand’s push for the 20 minute red to be trialled globally from July this year.
11 Go to commentsEver so often you all post a Danny Care story that isn’t the announcement that he has finally re-signed for one more, victory tour season at Quins and I’m just like, “well you fooled me again!” My absolute favorite player ever, we need to make his final year at the Stoop (and Twickers) official already. I know he supposedly snubbed France but I won’t feel better until he signs.
1 Go to commentslate hit what late hit it wasn’t at all late and can clearly see he was committed before the tackle
1 Go to commentsChristian Lio -Willies 2 try perfomance was a standout. As was captain Scott Barrett. Up front was where the boys won it.They are a great team and players. Fantastic Crusades , you can keep going.
1 Go to commentsI don't know how the locals feel about that? I guess if you call yourselves the Worcester Wasps that might be appease. But really we need more teams in the Premiership in my view so they are not padding it out as they are at the moment. It might curtail so many players going abroad as well
5 Go to commentsNZ 😭😭😭is certainly rivaling England for best whingers cup!😭😭😭 !!!
24 Go to commentsYup. New Zealand won 3 out of 10 world cups played. SA 4 out of 8 attempts 30 Vs 50 per cent.🤔🤔
24 Go to commentsShould've done this years ago. Change Saturday kick off times to around 11am. Up and off and back home before 3pm, limit travel time too. Allows players to actually do something else with their Saturday that's family oriented or being rugby fans they could ‘watch’ pro rugby. Increases crowds etc. How can anyone that enjoys grassroots and pro rugby have to choose between the two on Saturdays?
9 Go to commentsI bet he inspired those supporters just as much.
1 Go to commentsBen Smith Springboks living rent free in his head 😊😂
67 Go to commentsGood to hear he would like to play the game at the highest level, I hadn’t been to sure how much of a motivator that was before now. Sadly he’s probably chosen the rugby club to go to. Try not to worry about all the input about how you should play rugby Joey and just try to emulate what you do on the league field and have fun. You’ll limit your game too much (well not really because he’s a standard athlete like SBW and he’ll still have enough) if you’re trying to make sure you can recycle the ball back etc. On the other hard, you can totally just try and recycle by looking to offload any and everywhere if you’re going to ground 😋
1 Go to commentsThis just proves that theres always a stat and a metric to use to justify your abilities and your success. Ben did it last week by creating an imaginary competition and now you did the same to counter his argument and espouse a new yardstick for success. Why not just use the current one and lets say the Boks have won 4 world cups making them the most successful world cup team. Outside of the world cup the All Blacks are the most successful team winning countless rugby championships and dominating the rankings with high win percentages. Over the last 4 years statistically the Irish are the best having the highest win rate and also having positive records against every tier 1 side. The most successful Northern team in the game has been England with a world cup title and the most six nations titles in history. The AB’s are the most dominant team in history with the highest win rate and 3 world cups. Lets not try to reinvent the wheel. Just be honest about the actual stats and what each team has been good at doing and that will be enough to define their level of success.
24 Go to commentsHow is 7’s played there? I’m surprised 10 or 11 man rugby hasn’t taken off. 7 just doesn’t fit the 15s dynamics (rules n field etc) but these other versions do.
9 Go to commentsPick Swinton at your peril A liability just like JWH from the Roosters Skelton ??? went missing at RWC
14 Go to commentsLike tennis, who have a ranking system, and I believe rugby too, just measure over each period preceding a world cup event who was the longest number one and that would be it. In tennis the number one player frequently is not the grand slam winner. I love and adore the All Blacks since the days of Ian Kirkpatrick when I was a kid in SA. And still do because they are the masters of running rugby and are gentleman on and off the field - in general. And in my opinion they have been the majority of the time the best rugby team in the world.
24 Go to commentsHaving overseas possessions in 2024 is absurd. These Frenchies should have to give the New Caledonians their freedom.
21 Go to commentsBell injured his foot didn’t he? Bring Tupou in he’ll deliver when it counts. Agree mostly but I would switch in the Reds number 8 Harry Wilson for Swinton and move Rob Valentini to 6 instead. Wilson is a clever player who reads the play, you can’t outmuscle the AB’s and Springboks, if you have any chance it’s by playing clever. Same goes for Paisami, he’s a little guy who doesn’t really trouble the likes of De Allende and Jordie Barrett. I’d rather play Carter Gordon at 12 and put Michael Lynagh’s boy at 10. That way you get a BMT type goalkicker at 10 and a playmaker at 12. Anyways, just my two cents as a Bok supporter.
14 Go to commentsThanks Brett, love your articles which are alway pertinent. It’s a difficult topic trying to have a panel adjudicating consistently penalties for red card issues. Many of the mitigating reasons raised are judged subjectively, hence the different outcomes. How to take away subjective opinions?
11 Go to commentsYes Sir! Surprising, just like Fraser would also have escaped sanction if he was a few inches lower, even if it was by accident that he missed! Has there really been talk about those sanctions or is this just sensational journalism? I stopped reading, so might have missed any notations.
11 Go to commentsAI is only as good as the information put in, the nuances of the sport, what you see out the corner of the eye, how you sum up in a split second the situation, yes the AI is a tool but will not help win games, more likely contribute to a loss, Rugby Players are not robots, all AI can do if offer a solution not the solution. AI will effect many sports, help train better golfers etc.
45 Go to comments