CAMBRIDGE, England – Playing in their first-ever contest in England, Trinity Western's men's rugby team took on historic Cambridge University, falling 61-19 Wednesday evening at Grange Road Rugby Ground.
Making his return to the Spartans 1st XVs lineup after an extended period out with an injury, front rower
Ethan Jurgeneit (Bracebridge, Ont.) scored a pair of tries for the Spartans, while first-year
Ty Dayton (Langley, B.C.) dotted down once.
Matthew Willemse (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa) converted two of TWU's three tries to add four points to the Spartans ledger.
TWU will now prepare to take on University of Bristol on Feb. 24 at 2pm (GMT) / 6am (PST) in the second of their two-match England Tour.
QUOTABLE
Andrew Evans – Director of Rugby
"The vision of our program is to develop each of our players to their full ability within the Complete Champion Approach, but secondly, we want to become the most outstanding rugby program in North America. Coming here to England is an opportunity to test ourselves against some of the best teams in the world from prestigious universities. After the game, we spoke about what would it take to close the gap and beat Cambridge within two years. All the men are so hungry and we have a lot of young talent in this roster and we're building into the future, so when we come back, we'll be more mature and we'll persevere and see where we measure then.
"Coming on tour is a big challenge and a lot of it is about performing well when you're out of your element and out of your comfort zone. We seemed to panic a bit under the pressure Cambridge came with. They're very polished and their set piece was really good, especially their maul and lineout. In the second half, we challenged the boys to really play the way we want to, with more impact and more aggression and we certainly did that with some good carries.
Tim Zimmer (Fort St. John, B.C.) stood out and made an impact coming off the bench.
Kyle Finan (Red Deer, Alta.) also made some key tackles and carries coming off the bench.
Sam Tsoi (Hong Kong, China) stepped it up and had one of the best carries I've seen him have, so we certainly made some key adjustments that had an impact.
"Now we have to adjust and prepare to play Bristol on Saturday."
AS IT HAPPENED
Cambridge raced out to a 33-0 lead with five tries in the first 31 minutes, but after that, the Spartans pushed back, scoring 19 points, compared to Cambridge's 28 points, over the final 50 minutes.
Dayton got TWU on the board in the 34th minute, with Willemse converting, to make it a 33-7 game.
After Cambridge struck back with back-to-back tries, Jurgeneit tallied his first of two tries in the 47th minute to make it 47-12.
In the 76th minute, Jurgeneit rounded out the scoring with a converted try to push the Spartans to 19 points on the day.
NOTABLE
· TWU entered the contest having won three straight games, including an historic first-ever win over Central Washington (Feb. 3) along with wins over Queen's University (Nov. 19) and University of Calgary (Nov. 17) in the Canadian University Men's Rugby Championship.
· The match marked yet another contest against world-class university competition, as the Spartans schedule over the years has consistently featured some of the top university sides in North America, including perennial USA collegiate powers Saint Mary's and CWU, along with the Pacific Pride (Canada's National Development Program) and historic Canadian rugby strongholds UBC and UVIC.
About Spartan Athletics
As official members of U SPORTS, the Spartans currently compete in 13 sports in the Canada West conference, including women's and men's soccer, volleyball, basketball, hockey, cross country and track & field, as well as women's rugby sevens. TWU also competes as an independent team in men's rugby and disc golf. Since TWU entered U SPORTS in 1999, the Spartans have won 13 U SPORTS team championships and 32 Canada West team championships.
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