The Foothills Lions got a Friday night fright from an unlikely source.
Facing familiar foes in the Bow Valley Barbarians the Lions painted anything but a Picasso but in producing at best abstract art came away with their fourth-straight victory in a 41-39 victory Friday night in Cochrane.
“It ended up being a little tighter than some of the boys were expecting,” said club captain Nathan Marquardt. “The Barbarians are a fairly open, social team and some of the guys for us if we’re not playing Lions or have an off week we go and play with them.
“We might have underestimated them a little bit in their individual skills.”
Foothillls got sucked into some unstructured rugby against the Barbarians and it cost them early with the hosts taking the lead into the restart.
“Especially with relation to our last three games we kind of lost a little bit of the structure that we had been building,” the captain added. “There was good moments of that for sure and we capitalized during those and good defensive stands as well.
“It was a bit of a messier game than the last three wins.”
Trailing at halftime the Lions stormed out of the gate in the second half on trys from winger Oluwamuyiwa ‘Mo’ Abolarin, scrum-half Stephen Powell and forward Mike Pumphrey.
“He’s new to the club this year, a great forward runner,” the captain said of Pumphrey. “He had an awesome punch in from about 15 yards out on a penalty play.”
Fly-half Dan Larson hit five of his six kicks in the win, picking up crucial points in the two-point triumph.
“Dan had a great boot,” Marquardt said. “Every time ill-disciplined happened in their end we would just go for the points and he was spotting his penalties really well.”
The Lions improved their record to 5-2 in the Calgary Rugby Union’s third division.
They haven’t lost since the first week of June.
“It was a good reality check going into a long weekend break here,” Marquardt said. “The four straight wins is showing really good positive things when it comes to the players as wins usually do in the club and in training.
“It’s a very good thing especially coming into the later half of the year.”
Following a bye week the Lions return to the Wylie Park pitch to battle the second-place Calgary Hornets who figure to be Foothills’ toughest test of the season. Kick-off is 7 p.m. on Aug. 11.
“They will be a new opponent to us. We will be expecting good, structured stuff from those guys,” he said. “They’ve got a club right through to the premiership so lots of guys and a usually well drilled side with a lot of subs.
“It’s definitely going to have to be a game where we have to stick to our guns structurally.”
For more information go to foothillslionsrfc.org
