Anderlecht 10 - Luxembourg 62
Weather: 14°. Cloudy, no rain
Pitch: Hard
Kick off: 13:30 (2 x 30 minutes)
Spectators: 37
Luxembourg:
1- Xavier, 2- Yannick, 3- Jason, 4- Mario, 5- Gabriel, 6- Frederico, 7- Antoine, 8- Pedro, 9-Micky, 10- Benji, 11- Hugo, 12- Callum(c), 13- Stuart, 14- Gregoire, 15- Sean
Subs: 40’ 20- William for Micky, 45’ 19- Lucas for Pedro, 49’ 21-Matthew for Benji, 50’ 16- Niclas for Xavier, 55’ 22- Stanley for Gregoire, 57’ 17-Pierre for Jason, 18- Quentin for Yannick
Score: 12’ 0-5 Stuart. Benji 0-7; 14’ 0-12 Pedro. Benji 0-14; 24’ 0-19 Pedro; 28’ 0-24 Frederico; 31’ 0-29 Hugo; 35’ 5-29; 38’ 5-34 Sean, Benji 5-36; 40’ 5-41 Sean; 43’ 5-46 Callum, Benji 5-48; 52’ 10-48; 53’ 10-53 Gregoire, Matthew 10-55; 58’ 10-62 Lucas. Matthew 10-64
The first place in Belgium 3rd Division Group B secured Luxembourg a place in the play offs. 3 teams would play each other to decide 3rd Division champion and the two teams promoted to 2nd Division.
After the defeat against Laakdal (0-24) the week end before, Anderlecht knew this game would be decisive and another defeat would put an end to their promotion dreams. Thus it wasn’t a surprise when they started the game trying to score as soon as possible by putting a lot of pressure in Luxembourg defence. For the first 10 minutes the game stayed mostly in Luxembourg 22 but another display of good defence prevented the “mauve”s from scoring. After this period Luxembourg started slowly to move the game to the opposition half and opened the score in the first opportunity. A great pressure from Luxembourg backs made it difficult to Anderlecht to handle the ball in their in-goal and an opportunist Stuart just had to fell on the ball and score. Benji converted to set the score 0-7. Two minutes later, a perfect counter attack found Pedro on the wing and speed did the rest. With Benji conversion the score was now 0-14 and Luxembourg looked more and more comfortable in the game.
Luxembourg was playing an exciting rugby with the ball carrier having always support, the ball moving fast in the backs, forwards dominating rucks and almost no errors. This paid towards the end of first half with 3 tries in just a few minutes. First by Pedro after a quick penalty played inside Anderlecht 22. The second by Frederico as several good passes after contact sent him thru the defence for a run of 40m unopposed. Just before half time, 3 well played ruck phases sent the game to the right of the pitch; the ball was recycled to the back line and quickly passed to the wing on the opposite side for Hugo to score. Score at half time: 0-29
As expected, Anderlecht started second half willing to minimise damage. And they did when 4 consecutive penalties near the try line gave them the opportunity to smash the defence and score. This gave Anderlecht some momentum but Luxembourg wasn’t in the mood and 3 tries in 5 minutes ended any hopes the “mauves” might have to contest the score. Sean scored first after a stupendous back move showed to everybody how to go forward with support. 2 minutes later Sean scored again. This time entering in the back line and avoiding two tackles. At this moment Anderlecht organisation was completely shattered and 3 minutes later Luxembourg got a turn over, Benji kicked in the middle, the Anderlecht full back couldn’t handle the ball and Callum coming at full speed ran half pitch to score in the middle of the posts. Benji converted two of the three tries putting the score at 5-48.
With 20 minutes still to play and the victory assured, Luxembourg slowed the pace thus allowing Anderlecht a bit of supremacy which ended in a try. From a penalty 10m from the line a sloppy defence left the side unprotected and with 4vs1 the “mauves” scored. However, Anderlecht didn’t have much time to savour the try as one minute later things were back to normal when another perfect back move ended with Gregoire scoring on the wing. Matthew converted to set the score at 10-55.
The game was coming to the end with both teams replacing players but Luxembourg didn’t miss another opportunity and scored the 10th try of the afternoon. This time an all forwards work: 5 ruck phases inside Anderlecht 22, 4 pick and go well played and a couple of pop passes ended with Lucas scoring. Matthew converted to settle the final score at 10-62.
Apart from a short period at the beginning of the game, there were never any doubts about who was the best team. Luxembourg played without question their best game of the season with a very entertainment rugby which pleased even the hardest Anderlecht supporter. The forward pack performed superbly dominating the scrums and rucks. Ball carrier support was always good. This gave the backs the perfect attack platform and with Micky and Benji first, William and Matthew after, the transition to the back line was always the best. The backs took full advantage of it performing some really good moves, making almost no errors and scoring some beautiful tries. An outstanding Sean showed the way.
Man of the match: Sean
