Rugby Team Update
September 14th, 2007
-- Jon Niles, Head Coach, WVU Men's Rugby
Previous Recaps: [ 12-Oct-07 ] [ 10-Oct-07 ] [ 14-Sep-07 ] [ 2007 Preview ]

WVU Men's Rugby hosted the #10 ranked team in DII rugby (www.erugbynews.com) on September 1st. It has been our goal in recent seasons to step up the level of competition in tournament play and exhibition tests in fall and spring seasons to continually test and improve our game. The major difference in this match was not Albrights skill, pattern of play, set piece work or physicality, it was simply their fitness level vs. ours. Albright had been having 3 a day practices for 2 weeks before us. It is so much more difficult to score tries and play good rugby when you loose the possession battle. Albright were able to stall and steal our third phase ball consistantly after very good 1st and 2nd phase play. The halftime score was 12-10 in favor of Albright. The WVU guys would hold tight until the last minutes of the match when Albright scored twice to put the match out of reach and a final score of 31-15. Coach Niles and Fell will hammer home the importance of better fitness and, tempo setting (when to speed play up and when to slow it down) and stringing multiple phase play together. In order to do so the sqaud must be able to go 4-6 phases in order to beat teams of Albrights quality. We will correct it and get things right after all the final score was very promising considering it was our first match (exhibition) of the season. On Sept 8th we travel to Manassas, VA for the Blue-Grey classic. We are scheduled to play D1 James Madison, D1 University of Virginia, and D2 Mary Washington. A-side Squad for Albright: 1) Chris Lee 2) Kenny Wlikins 3) John Valasquez (Sub) Clint Feely 4) John Robbins (Sub) Patrick Christy 5) Kris Callaghan 6) Dan Mazur (Sub) Tim Turner 7) Corey Kyle try 8) Brendan Fitzgerald (c) 9) Logan Hartle 10) Ricky Palmer 11) Nick Rosales: try 12) Tommy French (c): try 13) Joe Callegeri 14) Vinnie Rozette (Sub) (Chris Vittese) 15) Jeff Dull