Weather: 5° and cloudy
Pitch: Good
Start: 11:00 (2 x 35 minutes)
Spectators: 58
With Mr. Lorre referring, Luxembourg started:
1- Xavier, 2- Yannick, 3- Niclas, 4- Mario D, 5- Gabriel, 6- Frederico, 7- AntoineR, 8- Pedro (C), 9-Micky, 10- Benji, 11- Hugo, 12- Callum, 13- Stuart, 14- Gregoire, 15- Sean
Subs: 40’ 22- Pascal for Hugo, 50’ 19- Lucas for Frederico, 55’ 20-Matthew for Benji, 16-Pierre, 17-Quentin, 18- Louis and 21-Francesco
Scorers: Antoine and Benji(C)
Yellow Card: Antoine
Certainly inspired by the presence of Rachid (welcome back!), for a change we started the game very well. Straight from the kick off BoistsfortB was under pressure and, apart for some sporadic moves, the game was most of the time near their 22. This attitude paid off at the 8th minute when we kept the ball alive moving forward and it ended up in the hands of Antoine who was unstoppable 2m from the line. Benji made the conversion with a difficult kick. After opening the score we took the normal BoitsfortB reaction but we were never really in danger. In the last 10 minutes we came back and if it wasn’t for some mistakes in the last pass and a good defence from Boitsfort we could have finish the game. At half time the score was 7-0.
As expected, second half started with Boitsfort giving all they could to score. It didn’t last long as our strong defence stopped short any attempt to get close to our try line. Even when playing with 14, when Antoine saw a yellow card at the 8th minute thanks to his big mouth, the team stayed united and survived the 10 minutes sin bin without damage.
The game kept very tight, Luxembourg dominating the scrums, BoitsfortB dominating the line outs. However, one had the feeling we were always more threatening to the opposition defensive and only the same mistakes as in first half and some bad decisions prevented us from scoring again. Benji had the opportunity to put us in a more comfortable score but his two kicks from a long distance were just short.
The final whistle arrived with the score 7-0 which puts us in a good position to win the group stage and go to the finals. The team did not play their best rugby but played with soul, amazing courage and fighting spirit with a superb defence and interesting collective moves when attacking. The final word goes for BoitsfortB. They’re an excellent team and gave us two very competitive games.
