HERRIMAN — Few teams in Major League Rugby make teams pay for mistakes better than the New England Free Jacks and the Utah Warriors learned that lesson the hard way in Saturday’s 33-26 loss.
Despite playing nearly flawless rugby for a little over 40 minutes, Utah served up way too many opportunities for the final 30 en route to yielding 28 straight points to the two-time defending MLR champion Free Jacks.
“We made too many mistakes in the second half. It’s as simple as that,” said Warriors Coach Greg Cooper. “Our first half was clinical and the second half was just way too many mistakes against a quality side like New England.”
Despite going scoreless throughout the second half, the Warriors found themselves just a couple of meters away from the try line in the game’s 77th minute with the game tied 26-26. But a knock-on penalty and a subsequent yellow card issued to Paul Lasike snuffed out the opportunity.
Utah appeared poised to at least earn a tie late, but lost the ball to the Free Jacks on a breakdown which they turned into a thrilling try in the 81st minute to top up off the remarkable comeback effort.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened in that breakdown, but there again was just another mistake,” Cooper said. “There’s no excuse for it. We made the errors and New England took advantage.”
As mentioned, the first half went nearly flawless for the Warriors with tries scored in the ninth, 15th, 21st and 40th minutes. All of them came off of line-out situations which were executed with great accuracy and dominant line play.
Liam Coltman accounted for the first Utah try with Aki Seiuli scoring the second for his first try scored of the season. Nic Benn scored the third try off an effective offload from Jordan Trainor with Kyle Brown topping it all off with a try scored courtesy of a deftly executed offload from Spencer Jones.
“We were clinical in that first half and for the first few minutes of the second half,” Cooper said. “Our line-out, our kicking game and our pressure — it was outstanding. But then it was just way too many mistakes. New England showed its quality, sure, but we allowed them to show their quality and that’s what’s so disappointing.”
Even with the loss Utah still managed to earn two critical bonus points in the standings — the first of which was secured before the half with four tries scored.
“It’s good, sure, but we’ve been doing that sort of thing all season,” Cooper said of securing two bonus points. “We have to learn how to put teams away. You make errors like we did against a team the quality of New England and you pay for it more times than not. That’s what happened tonight.”
With the loss Utah falls to 4-2 with 21 total points and will have a bye next week before heading out on the road to take on RFC Los Angeles. New England improves to 3-3 with 16 total points with the win.
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