In front of a home crowd of 2,298, the San Diego Legion took down the reigning champion Seattle Seawolves in the MLR season opener.
The first 15 minutes went Seattle’s way. San Diego committed a couple of costly penalties, and separate from a dash from Nate Ausburger, the Seawolves aggressively maintained control in their offense zone.
After missing their first penalty kick, they converted their second kick and added a breakaway try with conversion for an early 10-0 lead.
“We made an error off the line out defense and they scored pretty easy, it was a poor mistake by us” cited Legion Head Coach Rob Hoadley.
Legion battled back though and dominated the remainder of the half.
In the 16th minute Psalm Wooching fielded a line out at the 5-meter line, and behind a San Diego maul, Dean Muir powered through the try line for Legion’s first points of the game.
Just a few minutes later, Ausburger stripped the ball from his fellow number 9 near the 5-meter line. Fly-half Luke Burton completed a daring pass to outside center JP Du Plessis who reached the tryzone at the 21-minute point of the game. Burton made the conversion to give San Diego their first lead 12-10.
With under a minute remaining in the first half, the Legion added on to their lead with their third try of the ballgame in a very similar fashion as their first try. Burton made his second conversion kick of the game for a 19-10 halftime lead.
“We took control of field position and territory through our half-backs and really squeezed the Seattle team. Didn’t give them much possession and played on the right areas of the field and I think our forwards did a really good job in that” Hoadley said of the turnaround.
The Legion came out of the half firing, it took only 75 seconds for to ball to find Save Totovosau at the sideline. Save sprinted 25 meters down the line for the score and Burton converted for a 26-10 San Diego lead.
San Diego added to their lead when star free agent Ma’a Nonu continued to display his on-field excellence with another pointed pass to Dylan Audsley which created a two on one with Jasa Veremalua. When the Seattle defender made an attempt to tackle Audsley, he passed to Veremalua who sprinted the open field and dove into the zone for five points. Burton added two more points with the conversion for 33 unanswered points and a 33-10 lead.
Nonetheless, the Seawolves added 14 points to bring the game within nine points after a pair of tries and conversions to bring back memories of Seattle’s comeback win in the championship final.
The Legion defense was forced to protect the try line multiple times in the final 20 minutes of the game. With minimal damage, the Legion finished through the 80-minute mark for the first victory of the season.
“We made errors in terms of penalties and turnovers. We just shot ourselves in the foot and let them back into the game. So very disappointed with that period of the match. So much to tidy up there, especially at the end of the game” said Hoadley.
JP Du Plessis on allowing Seattle back into the game, “That’s maybe something we did a couple of times last season as well, definitely something we have to get rid of. When we get teams in a corner we need to keep them there. No doubt that will be some of the things we work on this week. Hopefully come back next week and play 80 minutes.”
San Diego looked good in multiple areas of the game, but their driving maul which resulted in two trys by Dean Muir proved to be crucial to the win.
Rob Hoadley also added “It’s great to start with five points. It’s nice make a good start in front of the home crowd and happy and excited to head off to Vegas next week.”
JP Du Plessis credited the team’s hard work for the win. “A lot was in our preparation before hand. We trained from the start with high intensity, high tempo, get the base up. We knew we had good players, we knew we could spread the ball. We knew we had strong forwards. It was just kind of sticking to our guns and sticking to our system.”
As for what the team needs to work on this week, acting Team Captain Nate Ausburger said “I’d like to see us cleanup some of the ball handling errors. That just comes with a little bit more continuity, we have to make sure we’re improving every single game. We can start hot and be the hot team all the way through this thing. But we’re really going to have to stay humble, keep working on the basics and keep moving forward.”
San Diego Legion (1-0) will head north for MLR weekend in Las Vegas where they will play against the Colorado Raptors (0-1) on Sunday, February 16 at 3 PM PST at Sam Boyd Stadium.