High School of Glasgow 12 Oak Bay High School 22

The final match of the tour went ahead in sunny but very windy conditions. Our slick handling of previous matches was not really evident in this clash, but worse still was that our defence had fallen to pieces. oak bay scored after some poor tackling after 5 minutes to make it 0-7. Good handling by the Oak Bay backs increased the scored to 0-14 after 14 minutes. Andrew Melville was on hand to receive a pass from Ewan Allen after a cross field kick by Aubrey Horton after 18 minutes to make the score 5-14. The game was brought to a halt for 25 minutes as an Oak Bay boy was hurt in a contact situation and we waited for the ambulance to arrive and take him off to hospital. The High School team retreated to the changing rooms rather than freeze in the strong cold wind. However after the match restarted Oak bay immediately kicked a penalty to make the score 5-17 at half time.

At the start of the second half more poor tackling allowed Oak Bay to stretch their lead to 5-22. The High School team came back into the game, thanks largely to the sin binning of an Oak Bay player but were unable to cross the line until Aubrey Horton finished off a good handling move with a 40 yard run in unopposed under the posts. He duly converted to make the final score 12-22.

Jamie McIntyre, Greame Williams, Aubrey Horton and Andrew Melville have been included in the festival squad, to be coached by Dave Barrett against a Young Canada XV. The squad has been made up from ourselves, the three Canadian schools we have played against along with Wimbledon College and Blackrock College.

At the end of the tour tiredness had set in and was maybe partly to blame for this final defeat. However, I'm sure that some of the boys may blame the hits they took from the girls at paintballing the previous day. It was noted that none of the staff took up the pupils challenge of being involved in the paintballing. As the tour comes to an ending, hopefully the boys will look back at all the great times they have had in Canada in the past two weeks and not think too much about this final defeat.


High School of Glasgow 2 Lambrick Park 0

The girls finished off their final game of the festival with an excellent performance against the best Canadian side. Obviously getting shot at by the boys at paintballing is the ideal preparation for the big games. Alex Stuart scored with a penalty flick in the first and then converted a penalty corner in the second half. The girls totally dominated the game for a 15 minute spell in the second half and were unlucky not to score more. Lucy Hendry had a great game and Nina Syme made some useful runs. At the back Alex Stuart and Rachel Osborne ran the show, although Rachel did fall victim to a very officious umpire who sin binned her towards the end of the game. The girls have one more match to go against a New Zealand team, Kristin College from Auckland tomorrow morning.

Saturday also sees Alex Stuart and Kim Mackay play for the festival team against a Vancouver Island U18 side.

This article was posted on 15-Apr-2006, 07:35 by Hugh Barrow.