By Robb Fenton
With their first game and win under their belts, along with a successful Rugby Fest in Edmonton, the Lloydminster Accurate Machining Reapers are back at it this weekend.
The Reapers are travelling to Saskatoon to take on the Gophers, a game they know they can win, but will have to be at their best.
“We had a great festival in Edmonton and I’m sure the boys are looking forward to getting back into the league schedule now. We’ll start preparation for that Tuesday night,” Reapers head coach Dean Murten said. “I’m really looking forward to a good performance from the guys. They’re all on a high and it’s nice to win like we did at the festival, but the league is more what we’re looking at this year.”
While they picked up the win in their season opener in the middle of May, Murten and the team weren’t exactly thrilled with the way they played defence and are hoping to fix any problems they might have had.
They know what needs improvement, they just have to translate that on to the field.
“We’ve got a decent squad out, the guys are pretty fit, so we’re looking for a real solid defensive performance, I don’t want to see any trys scored against us – that’s the first goal,” Murten said. “And we’re looking to score some pretty quick trys to get us on the board and take away some of the nerves, seeing as it is our first away game. Then we’ll take it from there.”
Last season, the Reapers defence was the best in the league by far, which allowed them to go undefeated and all the way to the finals.
While they are able to score trys and have a powerful offence, they know in the end, it will be the team that makes the fewest mistakes and plays the tightest defence that will come out on top.
“I’ve always said, defence wins you games and we’ve got people that can make one-on-one tackles, but it’s when there has to be multiple tackles and if you’re not organized you’ll eventually break down,” Murten explained. “We’ll be focussing on that in the practices leading up to our game. If we can sort that out, we’ve got people that score some trys from 80 metres. We don’t have problems scoring trys, but we’ve really got to sort our defence out.”
The Gophers are always a tough opponent and won’t quit regardless of the score, forcing the Reapers to play a full, complete game if they want to come away with the win.
“I believe they have a few new players this year. I’m not quite sure what positions they play. I know they have some players from last year, some of them played at the senior provincial level, so they’ve got some pretty good players,” Murten noted. “They are a team that will never lay down. They will just keep coming back and coming back. So we’ve got to be ready to play. Even if we get a couple of quick scores, we have to stick to the gameplan. We can let up and think because we are up a couple of scores we can start doing individual things.”
The gameplan is simple entering the game, strong defence, quick scores and play a full 80 minutes.
It sounds simple, but Murten knows if his team fails to execute, they could be in for a long game against a very determined team.
“Our focus is defence, get a couple of scores to start us off and then stick to the gameplan. We’ve got to do that because if not, these guys will just keep bouncing back,” he said. “If we get off to a good start, we can maintain that if we stick to the gameplan. If we don’t get the start we want, we can get frantic and we wait until the second half to really take control of the game. We’ve just got to get some scores and take control of the game and stay focussed for 80 minutes.”