The Utah Warriors save their best for last in scoring a resounding 45-28 win over RFC Los Angeles on Saturday for their fourth road win in as many attempts this season.
After a long delay at the half, the Warriors regrouped and dominated the final 40 minutes of play, outscoring LA 24-7, using an overwhelming maul and kicking game to set the pace.
“We have the ability to shut teams out through our forwards, our kicking game and our chasing game,” Cooper said. “We have a good all-around game, and tonight we went to a part of our game that could dominate LA, and it did. I think the important thing is that we aren’t just a one trick pony, but tonight it was definitely the maul we relied on, and it went very well.”
Very well indeed.
The Warriors scored tries in the 50th, 55th and finally the 66th minutes with a penalty kick from D’Angelo Leuila starting things off while allowing just one try from LA. All of the second half tries for the Warriors came off of effectively-executed lineouts and subsequent mauls with forwards such as Liam Coltman leading the charge, along with standouts like Tonga Kofe, Frank Lochore, Dylan Nel and several others along the forward line.
As for Coltman, he scored the first try of the second half, but more importantly again proved precise leading the line-out throughout the match.
“He was phenomenal and he’s been phenomenal for us all year,” Cooper said. “He’s just one of our great experienced players who doesn’t get ahead of himself and takes things for what they are. Liam is just a really good Warriors man.”
Particularly pleasing for Cooper was his team fixing exactly what ailed them in their loss to the New England Free Jacks two weeks ago. Using two weeks of preparation, afforded by a bye week, the team focused on snatching back momentum when things were apparently going against them, and then did as much in Saturday’s win over LA.
“We let them back into the game, which has been a bit of an issue, but we regrouped,” Cooper said. “We stopped the bleed and then we were able to dominate, so it was a good learning game for us.”
Like it has for most of the year, Utah jumped out to a big lead, this time a 21-0 pace after 20 minutes following tries scored by Joe Mano in the eighth and 15th minutes and a penalty try in the 20th. But LA stormed back to tie things up at 21-21 at the half while appearing poised to make things very tough on the Warriors in the second.
But as mentioned, Cooper’s team refocused, took back momentum in a big way and then rolled for the final 40 minutes.
“When you give away tries like that the tendency is to think that things aren’t going well, but that wasn’t the case,” Cooper related. “So at halftime I reminded the boys that we had 20 minutes of amazing rugby, and even though they came back, it was still tied. We were okay and then we started that second half the way we started the first and didn’t let up.”
Utah's kicking was also on point throughout, with Joel Hodgson again proving effective during live situations and Leuila proving effective as ever in his conversion kicking. Leuila also provided an impressive kick assist to Mano for Utah's first try of the evening.
“He strikes the ball so well,” Cooper said. “And when you score the amount of tries we have you get a lot of them wide, which makes the conversion kick as difficult as it could be. But it’s not a problem for D’Angelo, and Joel (Hodgson) is also coming along well. So we’ve been very pleased with our kicking game.”
With the win Utah improves to 5-2 on the season with 26 points in the standings and will next travel again to take on the San Diego Legion on April 19.
.jpg)
