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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Guyana ruggers inflict more agony on Trinis

by

20140608

When Christo­pher Singh stut­tered and stum­bled over the try­line in the fad­ing mo­ments of the game, Guyana na­tion­al rug­gers bet­ter known as the "Green Ma­chine" had in­flict­ed an­oth­er dose of agony on neme­sis T&T, who they de­feat­ed 15-8 to be crowned South­ern Zone cham­pi­ons in the NACRA Men's 15's Cham­pi­onship on Sat­ur­day, at the Na­tion­al Park, Guyana.

Play­ing be­fore an en­er­getic and pa­tri­ot­ic crowd, the Guyanese re­bound­ed from be­ing down 3-8 in the sec­ond pe­ri­od to romp to an ex­cit­ing 15-8 tri­umph and earn one year of brag­ging rights and a meet­ing with ei­ther the USA or Cay­man Is­lands.

Dis­play­ing the heart of li­ons, the Guyanese opened the scor­ing in the 32nd minute of play when Cap­tain Ryan Gon­salves con­vert­ed a penal­ty that was award­ed to them fol­low­ing an in­fringe­ment.

They held the slim ad­van­tage un­til half time.

The be­gin­ning of the sec­ond pe­ri­od saw both teams on the of­fen­sive with Guyana com­ing close to scor­ing af­ter find­ing them­selves deep in the vis­i­tors' half, but stub­born de­fend­ing erased their chances.

Bouyed by the stop, the Trinida­di­ans pro­duced a fierce of­fen­sive for­ay of their own, but just as they had done, the Guyanese back­line held firm. How­ev­er, the Tri­nis were re­lent­less in their search for points and forced an er­ror from the Guyanese which re­sult­ed in an au­to­mat­ic penal­ty which was scored by Don Ro­jas in the 51st minute.

The de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons then si­lenced the vo­cif­er­ous band of sup­port­ers on the side­line through Dar­rel Scott whose burst of speed off a kick down­field could not be matched by any of the Guyanese de­fend­ers and he end­ed over the try­line in the 61st minute as the Tri­nis took the lead 8-3. The en­su­ing con­ver­sion was missed.

Urged on by the par­ti­san crowd, the Guyanese led by for­mer cap­tain Theodore Hen­ry, the in­spi­ra­tional Richard Sta­glon and Ronald May­ers, all vast­ly ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers at this lev­el, turned the screws tight on the Trinida­di­ans in a vi­cious on­slaught as the clocked ticked away.

The an­swer would come from US-based sec­ond row Val­lon Adams, who burst through the mid­dle of the pack, be­fore se­cur­ing five valu­able points for his team to draw the score­line lev­el in the 69th minute. Gon­salves con­vert­ed to give the lo­cals the lead 10-8.

With the crowd shout­ing all sorts of ad­vice, the Guyanese rug­gers dug deep, en­sur­ing that con­trol­ling pos­ses­sion of the ball was crit­i­cal, while ex­e­cut­ing some cru­cial de­fen­sive stops.

Guyana won pos­ses­sion deep in­side the Tri­nis half and Singh, who had come on as a sub­sti­tute and known for his ex­cep­tion­al pass­ing abil­i­ty pro­duced the play of the game.

Col­lect­ing the ball deep in en­e­my ter­ri­to­ry, Singh faked a pass that the de­fence re­spond­ed to and even though he lost his foot­ing some­what he still man­aged to keep his fo­cus and lurch over the try­line to ef­fec­tive­ly end T&T's chances of stag­ing a re­cov­ery.

T&T-based Sta­glon speak­ing with this news­pa­per af­ter the game said the win was great for lo­cal rug­by, adding that he felt the op­pos­ing teams prob­a­bly un­der­es­ti­mat­ed them, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter Guyana was de­barred from the re­gion­al Sev­ens Com­pe­ti­tion last year.

Sta­glon added that the win was very im­por­tant for the sus­te­nance of the sport which ac­cord­ing to him hit a brick wall to a small ex­tent af­ter the dis­ap­point­ment of miss­ing last year's re­gion­al event.

"Right now the team is get­ting hard­er and hard­er to pick, play­ers can­not just be­lieve that they can walk in­to the team au­to­mat­i­cal­ly, play­ers are fight­ing for po­si­tions and this to my mind au­gurs well for the fu­ture of the sport."

He likened the win as a great day for rug­by in Guyana, adding that guys are im­prov­ing so au­to­mat­i­cal­ly the team is im­prov­ing and Guyana's rug­by is back in the eyes of the world.

"Our depth is in­creas­ing and we are show­ing oth­er coun­tries how strong we are and how com­pet­i­tive we can be," Sta­glon opined.

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