Utah
Bittersweet ending won’t mar Utah Warriors’ much-needed win over Houston
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HERRIMAN — The biggest match of the season came with a bittersweet ending for the Utah Warriors. But there was plenty of sweet before the bitter pill.
Trailing the Houston SaberCats by 3 points in the Western Conference, the Warriors got a much-needed win and a 5-point boost in the standings toward a playoff berth with a month left in the Major League Rugby regular season. But a final-minute try by the visitors helped Houston to a pair of bonus points that may have a significant impact on the playoff chase, as well.
Joel Hodgson, Joe Mano and Mika Kruse scored three straight tries on either side of halftime to help Utah to a 34-28 win over Houston, a second consecutive victory that vaults the Warriors into a tie for third place in the conference in front of a franchise-record crowd of 4,500 fans Saturday night at Zions Bank Stadium.
Hodgson converted a penalty kick for Utah (8-4, 38 points), and Caleb Makenne added two conversions to help the Warriors down the stretch.
“We got the win,” Utah coach Greg Cooper said after the match, “but I don’t think we got the quality of our position today, in terms of our lineouts; we couldn’t quite get our lineout playing how we wanted to.
“I think as soon as we had the ball, we had them under big pressure, but it was obviously disappointing to miss a lineout at the end that would’ve won the game for us. … But we’ve got a win, and we’re third on the table now, even though they got 2 points. We’ve beat them twice.”
Houston (7-5, 38 points) struck first with a penalty kick less than five minutes into the match, but the Warriors responded through Tyler Fisher’s try in the 13th minute.
At least, they thought they did. Fisher’s score was pulled back upon video review for an illegal obstruction (that went unchallenged by Utah), giving Hodgson a penalty kick to tie it up at 3-3.
Still, Fisher helped unlock the offense and manned a defense that held Houston to just three tires from Gideon Van Wyck until the final seconds of the match.
“Unfortunate that they called it back, but it still gave us a bit of a momentum boost,” Fisher said. “We got the penalty from it, and came away with 3 points. Any sort of momentum in the game is going to boost the boys. … It lifts the team, and it gave me a bit of a boost to get stuck into the game more, as well.”
Hodgson dotted one down in the corner to knot up the first half at 18-18 with four minutes left, and Mano broke free in the dying seconds of the first half to score his team-high 10th try of the season and give the Warriors a 23-18 lead at the break. Kruse’s 43rd minute try had the hosts rolling early in the second half.
But Van Wyck scored his third try of the match to pull the SaberCats within five, 28-23, in the 52nd minute. Makenne scored back-to-back penalty kicks in the final 20 minutes to keep Houston at bay, but the visitors scored a fourth try in the final minute of regulation that could prove pivotal as the two teams jockey for the third and final playoff berth in the Western Conference.
The score gave the SaberCats two crucial bonus points from the road affair — one for scoring at least four tries, and another for losing by 7 points or fewer.
“We’ve just got to be able to close games better than that,” Cooper said. “But we still won, so I’ve got to be very careful about being disappointed. It’s just a consistent habit of ours to give the opposition some opportunity that we shouldn’t have done.
“Of course, there’s a slight disappointment, letting them get that last try,” the manager later added. “But by and large, with the disruptions we’ve had the last 24 hours, I thought we played some really good rugby.”
With four matches remaining in the club’s sixth season, the Warriors host Rugby ATL next Saturday, May 27 at 7:30 p.m. MDT at Zions Bank Stadium. The pro rugby outfit from the Wasatch Front also has road trips to the No. 2 team in the West at Seattle and the No. 3 team in the East in New York, sandwiched around the regular-season home finale on June 10 against the expansion Chicago Hounds.
Houston ends the season against Chicago, Toronto, Old Glory DC and the East-leading New England Free Jacks.