Our first official match of the season took the Cavaliers to Alameda to play the Islanders.

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The Cavaliers completed their last preseason game of the 2010 season by defeating a good gold division team 22-12 At Amador Valley's field on February 20th.  Diablo has 2 U17 Eagle pool players in their backline and the Cavaliers were able to slow down their progress.  It was evident that Diablo's plan was to keep the ball tight with their forwards and then give their two star backs the ball to create yardage.

The Cavaliers were able to slow down their progress and used their speed to get around the outsides.  To see some pictures of the game click here.  Cavaliers should have scored another try but Dalton forgot to ground the ball.  Despite this error Dalton provided speed and good defense.  Jake Isabel worked hard to get the ball to his backs and when he did it quickly the backs beat their opposite numbers with realtive ease.  Foothill football standout Ryan Mende proved that he can play any back position and is able to find holes when the ball is spun wide.

Cody Heidebrech, CJ, and Andrew Bailey proved to be a good, beefy front row combination that should prove devastating in latter games.  These members are big and demonstrated a willingness and desire to take the ball up hard.

There is room for improvement.  Line outs were not effective and lots of work is needed in this area.  Communication in the forwards also needs work as too often the ruck needed one more body to secure posession.  Forwards and backs need to communicate to each other when the ball needs to be kept tight and when the ball needs to be spun wide.

Cavaliers v Diablo 1-24-10

Foothill High School was the location we found between storms for the Cavalier’s Sunday morning scrimmage against the Frosh-Soph Diablo Rugby Club. Since this was some players first game of the season, both sides agreed to have “set plays” on offense and defense for the first part of the scrimmage. After about twenty minutes, we were at normal play.

Our tackling and hitting was on target for preseason standards. Our rucking was good at times, but it needs to be a little faster. Getting to the breakdown quicker and sealing off the ball will give the scrummy clean ball. Defensively…..our counter-rucking was almost non existent. We will be working on defense this next week, working on the post and the line.

Our backline continues to develop nicely, working on the cut, or drift strategies we worked on in practice. The backline was a little flat at times, although you seemed to work it out and steepen the line when it was needed.

Scrums look like they’re coming along…flat backs, but need some more extension.

Good job overall Gents…

But remember that was a frosh-soph side!