Both New England’s entrants in the American Rugby Premiership lost in Week 4, with Boston RFC dropping a 20-6 decision to NYAC that was even closer than the score might suggest, while the Boston Irish Wolfhounds suffered at the hands of Life University in Marietta, GA, losing 69-13.
The forecasted rain arrived right on schedule at kickoff time in Boston, but it dissipated quickly. Boston controlled much of the early action, taking an early 3-0 lead with a Richie Lobb penalty. NYAC slowly took the upper hand as the first half wore on, but a very solid Boston defense ensured no more scoring in the first half.
Boston extended its lead with another Lobb penalty before NYAC got on the board, a visibly hobbling Mike Petri landing a drop goal from short range. In the 65th minute, NYAC notched its first try of the day to take the lead, a lead it would not relinquish. The conversion was missed but NYAC was ahead 8-6 with time running short.
Five minutes later, Mike Petri added another try, scoring near the posts after taking the offload following a rare line break. The conversion made the game a two score game at 15-6, a tall task for Boston given how tight the game was to this point. Indeed it was NYAC who finished out the scoring, with Kyle Granby getting on the end of a kick through to score in the corner as time expired for the 20-6 win.
“(Boston) started strongest, they were sharper than us at the start, they played the conditions better” said NYAC representative Neil McMillan. “They had the wind and used it and we struggled to get out of our half….those are the types of games you like to play in, they are good tough physical games…we are pretty happy with how things panned out, we had a lot of guys step up which was good”.
“Defensively we played much better than we did last week against Life” said Boston’s Mike Diamantopoulos. “Defense was good but we still struggled in attack to generate points….set pieces were good, scrums, line outs, we had a fair amount of ball there which we didn’t have last week, we just didn’t do enough with the ball we had but defense was ten times better”.
To keep up with news, reports and results from the American Rugby Premiership you can visit: http://www.americanpremiership.com/
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