{"id":7747,"date":"2014-08-14T00:13:33","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T04:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=7747"},"modified":"2014-08-20T11:57:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T15:57:50","slug":"grim-prospects-ahead-as-barbarians-slip-to-last-place-in-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/grim-prospects-ahead-as-barbarians-slip-to-last-place-in-league\/","title":{"rendered":"Grim prospects ahead as Barbarians slip to last place in league"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Reich<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Aurora Barbarians senior men\u2019s rugby club slipped into unfamiliar territory in Ontario\u2019s Marshall Premiership after falling to the Harlequins at the George Jones Rugby Complex in Brantford on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The loss, combined with a win by Waterloo County RFC, pushed the Barbarians into last place in the standings with the grim prospect of relegation to the Tier Two Division now looming.<\/p>\n

The Aurora side travelled to Brantford buoyed up by the return of four veteran players to the lineup, but also missing a few key younger starters due to injury and alternate commitments. <\/p>\n

Head Coach Ian McLeod was also unavailable for the match as he was away leading the Provincial Under-18 team at the national championships in Calgary.<\/p>\n

The team struggled early while sorting out its defensive alignments and attacking lines. Brantford took advantage of the situation scoring two trys early to lead 12-0. <\/p>\n

After 15 minutes, the Barbarians were fortunate to get a line break from deep in their half and great support play resulted in a try by Daniel Resnick. The conversion by Mark Denton brought the score to 12-7. The Barbarians miscued on the ensuing kickoff, putting Brantford in a position to score their third try, but the Barbarians managed a try of their own before the half ended by AJ Luongo and the convert and a subsequent penalty kick from Denton left the gap at only 19-17 in favour of Brantford at the break.<\/p>\n

Despite a determined effort to start the second half, the Aurora side made some costly turnovers and proved suspect in their tackling allowing Brantford to score two trys early in the half. <\/p>\n

The Barbarians made an attempt at a comeback including a long support try by Mark Denton, but Aurora was only able to squeak in one other try near the end of the game on a strong individual effort by replacement player Tyler Neil, and Brantford picked up one more to make the final score 41-29. The final try by Neil was significant in giving the Barbarians four on the day and a valuable bonus point.<\/p>\n

But the home victory by Waterloo over Markham Irish gave the County club a five point win and they now sit two points ahead of the Barbarians in the standings.<\/p>\n

In the second team game, the Barbarian Development side was again reeling due to call-ups. Despite a superior scrum, the squad could not match the pace and pressure exerted by Brantford. The game was characterized by overlaps and breakaway runs coming from the Harlequins and a disappointing lopsided final score. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aurora Barbarians senior men\u2019s rugby club slipped into unfamiliar territory in Ontario\u2019s Marshall Premiership after falling to the Harlequins at the George Jones Rugby Complex in Brantford on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}