Acton 10's - Quick match reports

North Shore 10 South Shore 5

It took most of this game for NSRFC to wake up and remember what a rugby ball looked like. We played sloppily and should have done much better against what was a very young (U-19?) side. Not-so-old friend Martin Mahoney, left his cows and sheep behind for a day, trekking all the way Western MA to give us some instant offense and opened the scoring with a try up the middle. Rich, not knowing that he could use a tee, shanked the dropkick.

Then another period of sloppy play ensued, with knock ons, bad decisions and missed opportunities too numerous to mention. However, as the game was winding down South Shore threatened and spread the ball across the field for a tying try with under two minutes to go. That was not cool.. We got the ball back after the kickoff and somehow scraped together a bunch of phases without killing the ball (kinda like they do on TV) which mostly involved TBO and Kenny. Eventually a phase found Rob Moran in the middle where he attempted to barrel through some people and somehow landed in the try zone with enough downward pressure to convince the ref. Game over.

North Shore 3 Old Gold I 30

We didn't really give ourselves much of a chance in this game. They were clearly skilled and moved the ball well, and we didn't..so much defend the middle or the wings effectively. We had our moments and threats but nothing would come through for us. They exploited the weak side around the scrum as well as overloading well. Not much more to say about this one.

North Shore 25 Old Gold II 0

Suddenly, we are good again. Or they weren't that good, or both. We were the ones using the space in this match, shipping the ball out to Trevor a few times and he took full advantage with a pair of tries. One of those was accentuated by a juke to get better kicking position, a crowd pleaser. Martin also found paydirt, shooting up the middle of the field in the loose and outrunning the defense and crossing the try line posing in grand fashion. Good times. Another try was scored by Richie "I can't believe this move worked again" DePiero, where he ball fakes the defender nearest the scrum and coasts in untouched from 10 meters. Maybe one more score happened, maybe not. There were probably some kicks were made, and others missed. Definitely some knock ons etc. but we got ourselves a win in the knockout bracket.

North Shore 0 Northeastern 12

The bad news: well you can see the scoreline, but also we've lost to them two years in a row. Next year we could really benefit from having everyone clear their calendars and making an appearance so we can avoid this next year. The relatively good news: it was a closer game than last year.

We played a fairly even match, but they got in for two scores while we only threatened here and there. Most of the game was played in the middle third of the field. We weren't able to string together too much phase ball and it showed in the result. We definitely were outplayed overall, but it was one of those games where you felt like it wasn't out of reach until the final whistle. Tourney over.

Thanks to Martin for his cameo appearance, as well as new guys Neal and Matt for making the trip out, all three played really well. Note to everyone for next year: shade tents..Brilliant!


Mike Mad Dog Magee
Jeff Teach West
Jesse Dole
Matt Thibault
Ken Spinale
Gus del Puerto
Rich DePiero
Jesse Brewer
Trevor Maz
Martin Mahoney
Rob Moran
Neal Toomey
Matt English
Zack Plante