Men’s rugby loses big to Park City
by eric jungblut
staff writer
The Utah State men’s rugby team was defeated 80-0 by the Park City Haggis Rugby Football Club on Saturday afternoon at the HPER Field.
Haggis scored in the opening minutes of the game and didn’t stop from there, shutting out a USU team that was significantly younger than its opponents.
“Haggis has some players that used to play professional rugby,” said Austin Cloward, a freshman on the USU team. “We have like 10 freshman – they are all 18 and 19. They were a bunch of 30- and 40-year-olds on their team.”
“It’s fun playing against old men,” said Michael Paskett, Cloward’s freshman teammate. “They have a 65-year-old guy on their team. Some of them played professionally.”
USU freshman Max Jorgensen said he felt size also played a part because many Haggis players were larger in weight and height than their USU counterparts.
“They had us out-scaled – they were just the better side,” Jorgensen said. “We had some good moments, but we just couldn’t pull through. They are just an older, more experienced team.”
In the several scrums between the two clubs, the larger Haggis players almost always came out with possession, and USU was often pushed back by the size and strength of its opponents.
The Aggies made several long runs but failed to score on any of them. Many of these runs resulted in rucks that turned possession over to Haggis.
Haggis plays its first playoff match April 14.
“If we go into that game two weeks from now playing like we did today, we will win, but it will be a hard fight,” a Haggis coach said to his players after the match. “We can’t make the same mistakes we did today.”
Despite the loss, Jorgensen said he was optimistic about his team’s future.
“We did really good for the amount of talent that they’ve got,” Jorgensen said. “We’ll just have to do better next time.”
– ej.jungblut@gmail.com