Match Report: Snake River 28, Portland 10

So the Pigs went on the road to Boise this week. Unfortunately, they came up short.

On the bright side, it turned out better than last time the team traveled over there. Last time Portland was in Boise, we lost by the score of something in the area of 95ish to zero. I don't even know how many points they scored. Had no clue, we had stopped counting after about 45. The only thing I was sure of, is the zero points that we put on the scoreboard. And I heard them talking about breaking the century mark towards the end of the game, so there ya go.

So, again, I was not about to travel with the team. But from what I heard, we had a decent amount of guys make the trip to play. This is always a good sign in rugby. If your team travels well, you can win a lot more games than the average club. There are not many teams that travel well and win on the road, so pretty much what happens is every team wins its home games. That makes for a lot of parity in the league. This makes it harder to tell who are the really good teams each year.

But this much is true, Snake River is the defending league champion and they are still very very good.

A little perspective for you all -- we won our first game last week, 20-13. Snake River won their first game (which was in Boise) by the score of 88-0. That sheds some light on how good they really are.

So we had ourselves a little bit of a uphill battle. Nevertheless, we weren't afraid of them at all. Here is the official match report, which is much more informative than the one from last week.

A very blustery day at the sod farm in Boise.

Snake came out firing and some how Portland managed to hold off an early try... Snake opened the scoring with a penalty kick and then added an unconverted try. Portland stayed in touch after a great attacking block as the scrum half touched it down in the corner to get the Pigs on the board. At the half it looked the battle was unsure as the home side only led by 8.....18 - 10...the second half found a well drilled forward pack of the snakes controlling the movement of the ball at the break down.. Portland challenged well but the half time adjustments kept them shut out of the points... final score Snake 28 - Portland 10...

Match reports are always a bit choppy and usually don't make much sense. Come to think of it, they don't make much sense if you read them and you were actually AT the game you're reading about. That's how bad they are. Hey, we're talking about rugby referees, not literature professors or poets or anything.

Anyway, the result of this game is very encouraging. So far we are looking like the second best team in the league. Snake River is hardly beatable these days. The fact that we traveled all the way over to their place and DIDN'T get blown out, means more than it looks at first glance.