Monday, October 12, 2009

NUS wins SuNIG 7s


Last week in the inaugural SUNIG 7s, the City Boys were in for a shocking 3rd finish, as they crashed out in disastrous fashion. The signs could not be any clearer when the SMU A side lost to NUS B in the group stages, 17-22.

This year, NUS was definitely out for blood and was looking for nothing but sweet revenge after suffering a narrow defeat in last year's SUNIG 7s finals to the City Boys. And in the end, when the two A teams met in the semi finals, it was like a deja vu of what happened in 2007 when the two teams met in the SMU ringEmail 7s semi-finals. SMU were off to a confident and flying start scoring two tries in the first half and leading by a score of 10-0 against NUS, which have lately been coined to be known as the Clementi Pretenders. However, NUS had other ideas and staged an impressive comeback and sealed their place in the finals by establishing yet another successful come back (but this time with no controversies, like we had 2 years ago), winning by a score of 12-10 and denying SMU any hopes of defending their 7s title.

The Clementi Pretenders went on to meet the exciting and impressive underdogs, NTU. And the finals turned out to be yet another comeback story, with NUS having to dig deep and come back from behind to win the tournament 26-14.

The tournament has shown how closely matched the 3 universities are, and probably there might be a slight hint that this season might see the "fall" of the Golden Era for SMU. The team has been in nothing but a shell-shock state and will be looking to pick up the pieces. This tournament paints a very interesting story for next year when the teams meet for the 3rd Tri-Univerisities 15 a side Rugby Championships.

Meanwhile, the SMU team has wasted no time to mourn and has been reported to be back in the training camp and looking forward to sort out the problems within the team and prepare themselves for the next challenge, the India Rim Australia University Games in Australia this December.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Aint SIM joining us for 15s this season?