Collingwood defeated Rockridge 50-21 today in the 17th annual Hatch Shield match. It was an emphatic victory for the Cavs who took a 7-0 lead less than a minute into the game and never looked back as they raced to a 38-0 halftime lead. Collingwood has now won the last three Hatch Shield games.
Collingwood's early lead came off a Nate Holm intercept. This was quickly followed up by a well-worked try that saw Joey Ficocelli break clean through the Rockridge defence. Nate then scored his second try of the game to make it 21-0 less than ten minutes into the game.
Lucas Okano then made a huge run and just as he was tackled, he off-loaded the ball to Linus Hartner who had worked very hard to support Lucas. Joel Abdel-Barr and Sherven Etemadahari added a try each before halftime. Graeme Neill kicked four conversions in the first half to add eight points to the Collingwood total.
In the second half, the Cavs scored almost right away to make it 45-0 when Lucas Beaupre very smartly dove over a ruck to score. Lucas followed this up with another try to close out the scoring for Collingwood.
Captain Tyler Preston leads the Cavs onto the field for the 17th Hatch Shield match.
Lucas Beaupre scores one of his two tries.
Sebastian Hutton powers his way through a Rockridge tackle.
Thomas Foote and Nate Holm go high to compete for the opening kick-off of the second half.
At halftime, Collingwood's Grade 4 and 5 rugby stars took to the field for some flag rugby.
It was an exciting 10 minutes as tomorrow's stars got to play in front of a big crowd.
(All photos courtesy of Blair Shier.)