Digby boys rebound in second half

Published on April 21st, 2008

Published on January 31st, 2010

Rugby league splitting next season, promising more competitive play

Digby Regional wasn’t given much chance last week against perhaps the best high school boys’ rugby team in Nova Scotia, and the 47-5 reflected Thursday’s game on the DRHS field.

But the score doesn’t show that Digby outplayed Avon View in the second half, says coach Alain Saulnier.

The Windsor school scored all of its points in the first half, and Digby’s five points came in the second when Saulnier says the home team stopped standing around in awe watching the talented Avon View squad. “They were flying and we were standing, and when you stand around in rugby you get run over,” Saulnier said.

Avon View did more substituting in the second half, but it still played some of its stronger players, said Saulnier, so Digby’s stronger play wasn’t against a weakened squad. “They stopped watching and began playing,” Saulnier said of the Digby boys.

Digby team member Joe Robicheau even sounded optimistic on the weekend, looking forward to the game tomorrow, April 22, at 5:30 p.m. against Middleton Regional. “It should be a competitive game,” he said.

Digby and Middleton will be looking at different circumstances next season when the league begins a second division for smaller schools, or those with fledgling teams.

It’s hard to compete with the league’s top teams, said Saulnier.

Most of the Avon View players are grade 12 students and the school has enough players for ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams, he said. That school’s main competition has come from Kings-Edgehill, a private school in Windsor that has A, B and C teams, and players who also compete on the Valley’s senior men’s team, the Bulldogs.

But for the 2009 season, a Division 2 league will allow Digby to play teams on a more equal footing, and a new team from Yarmouth Memorial High School will join the league.

Yarmouth was the last team from southwestern Nova Scotia to win the provincial high school rugby championship and that was in 1956, coincidentally the last year that school had a rugby team.

In Digby’s first game of the season, played April 15 at West Kings, the boys were shut out 30-0.

To correct an earlier story, the season is 12 games long, not six. Playoffs begin May 29, with the championship game May 31. The provincial title will be decided June 6-7 in Halifax.