Before Friday’s Major League Rugby match between host San Diego Legion and the Houston SaberCats, seven experts predicted the winner.
Four picked Houston. Three favored San Diego.
Nice try, guys.
Thanks to a winning try by Legion star Anthony Purpura, San Diego came back to beat the SaberCats 35-32 in a thrilling overtime game at Torero Stadium on the campus of the University of San Diego.
“There was resiliency at the end,” said Legion head coach Rob Hoadley as San Diego improved its inaugural season record to 2-0-1 but topped the seven-team league in table points.
Hoadley saw room for improvement, however.
“I thought for the second half of the game, we were giving the ball away too much — in fact, when we were in great attacking positions,” he said. “And I thought it was going to cost us, but we stuck in there and I was very proud of our forwards, who had a bit of a tough time in the scrum.”
But the Legion crew backed themselves near the try line at the end, “and they had the final word,” said the veteran London-born player and coach.
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The victory avenged a 33-17 preseason loss a month ago, when “Houston was more physical than us,” he said.
In Friday’s game — airing as the Game of the Week on CBS Sports Network — Hoadley spotted technical errors but said he thought his squad was much more physical, “and that kept us in the game so that we could finish off at the end.”
Did the Legion have too many penalties?
“There were only three in the first half, which is a good return, and in the second half we had four at the scrum again, which has been a bit of an Achilles’ heel for us, so we are going to have to tidy that area up at the scrum because we are losing momentum in the game there,” he said.
The victory was a challenge because its previous game was Sunday — and “that’s very, very difficult,” the coach said. “The boys were tired coming in, but we’ve worked hard to regenerate them in the week.”
San Diego led 21-20 at halftime, but Houston took a 32-28 lead with 5 minutes to go. Anthony Salaber scored three five-pointers and Pat Blair one try — besides the winner by Purpura.
Dylan Audsley had four conversion goals for the Legion and Ben Cima added one as 1,000 cheered the new team.
“To keep fighting and then to get the result in the last minute, in fact two minutes overtime, that’s an incredible mental win for us,” Hoadley said. “Although we weren’t great technically today, we’re really going to take strength from that final performance.”
For the Houston SaberCats, Sam Windsor provided most of the scoring with a try, two conversion goals and five penalty goals. Osea Kolinisau gained one try and one penalty goal.