Oak Bay’s Castaway Wanderers are headed to their third straight B.C. Rugby Premier men’s league semifinal after a sound 59-29 defeat of the UVic Vikes in the first round of the playoffs at Windsor Park on Saturday.
Meanwhile the Castaway Wanderers premier women finished their regular season with a 38-10 win over the Vancouver Thunderbirds and move into the premier women’s final four. They’ll visit Capilano in North Vancouver on Saturday while the CW men travel to Burnaby to face the top-seed Burnaby Lake RC for Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
It’s the club’s third straight trip to the B.C. Rugby premier league semifinals. The last two years CW has lost the semifinal to UBC Thunderbirds. This year the Thunderbirds face the UBC Old Boys in the other semifinal.
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Coming off Saturday’s dominating first half, when CW outplayed UVic to the tune of a 42-3, coach Scott Manning has a renewed confidence. He called it the best 40 minutes of rugby he’d seen from CW in his three years as coach.
The best game I’ve been apart of. Dominating performance from the boys with some unbelievable attack and defence. Great way to begin the playoffs. Looking forward to another week of prep for a semi final clash. #LetsRide 🔴🔵⚫️
— James Pitblado (@jamespitblado13) April 21, 2019
“Burnaby does offer bigger challenges than UVic, they’re good in the set pieces and scrums, and they’ll be more direct than UVic, who tries often to go around,” Manning said. “But if we can play the way we played in the first 40 minutes against UVic, if we can play that way, any team in the league will have trouble with us,”
CW’s men finished the regular season of the B.C. Rugby premier league with 13 wins and three losses, fourth in the standings. Unfortunately, CW lost all three games against the teams above them.
Saturday’s Castaway Wanderers tries came from Kelton Dawe, Fergus Hall, Liam Chisholm, James Pitblado, Sawyer Herron, Cullen Fawcett, Baluci Kegode, Matt Sutherland and two from Josiah Morra. The Vikes got tries from Gavin Kratz, Noah Bain and a pair from Brennig Prevost. It was the final game as a Vike for Oak Bay’s Crosby Stewart, who graduates from U Sports rugby with Vies Gradyn Bowd, Kapi Vataiki and Oliver Nott.
Scrum half James Pitblado left the game but should be healthy while the club also gets a boost in the return of two players, U20 national team member Brandon Schellenberger in the backs and national team 15s member Dustin Dobravsky at No. 8.
