St Andrew's chased hard by Muir
St Andrew’s had a tough assignment on Saturday taking on Muir College without eight players who were at Craven Week trials, but they managed a hard-fought 55-26 win.
The match started at a furious pace with both sides showing clear intention to move the ball and play positive rugby.
It was St Andrew’s who opened the scoring through a brilliant individual effort by Ryan Horne, he converted his own try to give St Andrew’s a 7-0 lead.
The kick of scrumhalf Cameran Macfarlane broke and offloaded to lock Simon Quinn who sprinted 40-metres to score in the corner and extend St Andrew’s College’s lead.
Muir however were not going to lie down and scored a brilliant try of their own. From then on the teams traded tries as Andrew Rushmere scored for St Andrew’s before Ryan Horne sliced through for his second.
Muir replied to each of these with good passages of play and were full value for the narrow 24-21 gap at half-time.
Straight after half-time Muir College hit the lead as they capitalised on a College error, taking the lead for the first time 26-24.
This seemed to spur the College side on as they seemed to find another gear and play some outstanding rugby in the closing 25 minutes.
First it was the turn of Ben Dovey as he took a short ball from Andrew Rushmere and sliced straight through the defence to score next to the uprights restoring the St Andrew’s lead, 31-26.
After some more good interplay between backs and forwards Courtney Archer received a cut-out pass and finished well in the corner to extend St Andrew’s College lead.
Then after some consistent pressure on the Muir line No.8 Matt Andrews grabbed an intercept and scored under the poles before Courtney Archer grabbed his second by rounding off a good back row move from the base of the scrum, all of this extending College’s lead to 48-26.
In the dying minutes centre, Ryan Horne, put the cherry on top as he was on the end of another promising backline move and went around his man to score his hat-trick and make the final score 55-26.
It was a good performance by the St Andrew’s College side against a plucky Muir side who certainly never gave up and must take credit for the way they played the game.
The scorers:
For Muir: TBC
For St Andrews:
Tries: Horne 3, Quinn, Rushmere, Dovey, Archer 2, Andrews
Cons: Horne 5
