October 18, 2003
A strong fall league season came to a disappointing end this Saturday as the Pigs lost to the Bottom Feeders in St. Cloud.
The first half saw St. Paul off to our typical slow start, and the Feeders quickly had the ball in our end. Only a couple of missed St. Cloud penalty kicks at goal and some last ditch defending from the Pigs kept St. Cloud from taking an early lead. Finally, midway through the first half the Pigs seemed to wake up and put on some fine back line moves, eventually resulting in a fine try from JR Burgess. The conversion was missed, and the lead stood at 5 – 0. More good moves followed, but all were stopped short by poor passing, lack of support, lost balls in rucks, and other mishaps. Nonetheless, we went into the half with a 5-0 lead.
The second half started with more of the same – good moves by the Pigs that were killed by stupid mistakes. The mistakes finally cost us, as St. Cloud punched the ball in off a loose ball from a lineout and converted to take a 5 – 7 lead. The Pigs fought back, but again couldn’t finish, and a nice breakthrough run by the Feeders made it 5 – 14. St. Paul fought back again and camped near the St. Cloud try line, but still couldn’t punch it in. Fighting for a late score, we then gave up a final counter attack try for a final score of 5 – 19 and the first loss of the fall season.
On the bright side, despite the poor play and the loss, the Pigs won the 2003 Minnesota D-3 title over St. Cloud by virtue of our superiior number of bonus points.
Lineup:
1.Troy Midboe(Chris Griffin) 2.Matt Sonnek 3.Luke Utting 4.Jake Hodgson(Ike Muringai) 5.Ben Hanson 6.Mike Lundberg 7.Joe Huberty(Mike Soucheray) 8.Mike Hankee (captain) 9.Jason Rombalski 10.Bill Bridgeman 11.Brett Carter(Jeff Zweber) 12.Jamarr Johnson 13.JR Burgess(Ernest Wayde) 14.Steve King 15.Grant Dietrich
Scoring:
Tries: Burgess