RUGBY
National A Division
Raffles Junior College vs Anglo-Chinese Junior College
Wednesday, 9 May 2007 at Raffles Junior College
Story and pictures by Red Sports reader Mr Wee Ban Bee, an ACS old boy. Thanks, Mr Wee!
Raffles Junior College (RJC) beat Anglo-Chinese Junior College (ACJC) 7-3 in a hard fought game this afternoon to set up a semi-final clash with St Andrew’s Junior College. ACJC will now have to meet ACS(Ind) in the other semi-final, a scenario both Anglo-Chinese schools did not want.
An RJ player is hauled down by JD of ACJC. © Wee Ban Bee
The match started almost an hour late at 5.25 pm due to rain and possible lightning.
RJC scored the first and only try about 3 minutes after kick off. According to observers, it should not have been given as it was a forward pass that missed the referee’s attention. A clearance by ACJC was blocked by RJ and with the bouncing ball, RJ was able to go ahead and get a try even though it was supposedly a forward pass. RJC’s conversion was successful to make the score 7 – 0 to RJC.
AC and RJ players engaged in a ruck.© Wee Ban Bee
After that most of the game was played in RJ’s half. A penalty was given to ACJC and Mandeep Singh managed to convert to give AC their 3 points.
An AC player tries to take down Nazirul of RJ. © Wee Ban Bee
During the second half, RJ were awarded a penalty right in front of the goal post about 30m out. The kick went way left and missed the posts altogether.
Mandeep Singh of ACJC plays a kicking game. © Wee Ban Bee
ACJC pressed on with their attack and managed what appeared to be a try right under the goal posts but this was not seen by the referee as the boys were piled up over each other. Refereeing was fair to both sides. ACJC will thus meet ACS(I) at Old PA next Wednesday 16 May at 3.15pm with RJC meeting SAJC at 4.30pm.
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed are the writer’s own. You don’t agree with it? Write your own. We’ll post it. And I mean WRITE, not mouth off. Writing is for adults, mouthing off is for juveniles.
An RJ player in full flight. © Wee Ban Bee
Yiming of RJ player runs into an AC tackle. © Wee Ban Bee
Shahir of ACJC is stopped in his tracks by Zhehan of RJ. © Wee Ban Bee
A maul forms around an RJ player. © Wee Ban Bee
An ACJC player bulldozes his way through the RJ line. © Wee Ban Bee
Editor’s comment: Sounds like there were some controversial calls, huh? If you were there too, please feel free to share your comments about the game. If you recongise yourself or your team mates in the pictures, let us know names and we’ll update the captions. Thanks.
i tink i agree wit neutral.
you got to face the facts guys. when u play in a game you not only play the opponents, but errors by the ref, the weather, the crowd, the media, screaming coaches and insults …lots more.
a good team is one that can rise above all these situations and come out victorious..
i dont think the ref was biased, but that mistakes happen. its funny that no one mentioned the correct decisions he made but only point out the wrong ones.
and no one has a right to gun down mr wee. at least he bothered to comment on the game, eventhough he didnt know much about the sport. (*i assumed mr wee didnt know much abt rugby just like les and cheng, pardon me for misassumptions)
so mr wee and red sport team, thanks so much for this website. its about time someone saw the vision of singapore school sports.
just a random thought for the RJC guys, does it feel good that nearly half the raffles first team were from AC? or that the Raffles captains for the past 2 years had been from AC as well? im wondering where pride comes in on that take. please comment.
anyway, on another note, a video of the entire match had been recorded on a video camera and which from what i heard, might be sent to some sort of international rugby board for investigation into the ref. lets hope it does go through and we’ll let a certainly neutral party decide on the ref.
sighs what a waste for ac not to have an ac vs ac final. imagine the best from acsi and acjc presently. thats what acjc would be if acs didn’t start the IB program.
AC for the win!
the acjc player was not help up. an rj player plaved his hand under after the ac player had grounded the ball. and that was only one incident, there was another one which was much more obvious, and again the ref failed to award it.
in all fairness, i think this person sums it up
“Game Time Says:
May 9th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
The refereeing in my opinion wasn’t biased but for him to miss out on the AC try was…..ummm….unforgiveable! That would have won the game for ACJC.
Poor postitioning of the ref in such a critical moment in an important game is not excusable!!
Both teams played hard and fair. The poor weather condition affected play and it was a generally scrappy but exciting affair. ”
peace
As a player on the pitch, i feel that both sides put up a good fight and RJ won it because we did all the simple things right. kudos to my teammates, don’t let all these comments abt acjc dominating us and should’ve have won get to us, we all know we won it fair and square, there were an equal number of penalties given to both sides. As for the people who still insist that the disallowed acjc “try” was a try, you werent on hand to see it happen right in front of you and the ref made a good call because we held the acjc player up and he failed to ground the ball.
Furthermore we can also claim we should’ve been given a try early in the first hald when the acjc fullback fumbled the ball and blocked our winger from retrieveing it by blocking him and as a result our winger knocked into him and the ref made a controversial call by awarding acjc the penalty. We would’ve scored again and put the game out of reach. but no complaints were made because we are gentlemen playing a thug’s game and we accept that decisions cant always go our way. whatever the case, there were calls for and against both sides so the result’s fair and RJ won. period.
wooo *claps*power.tnx ah.
I think we should all acknowledge Mr Wee for his very charitable and Christian spirit.
Thnks Les for your deletion of the rude comments that came in. It must be real rude tha you had to censor the comments. I wonder if they were at the game or just reading the report to come to such conclusions.
I don’t see how bias my report was as maintained by SL. It was what I saw the game as, I even said that the refeering wasn’t biased. So how unbias can I be?
RJ said it correctly, they won it fair and square, ACJC was just unlucky not to be able to pentrate RJ’s strong defence. Simple as that.
It is now a family afair for the semifinals that no one in the AC family wished to see. But that s how the cookie crumbles.
To the rude commentors, you are forgiven for you know not what you said.
All is forgiven Go and sin no more! Just fair comments for the future.
actually its true that the referee was biased. i think ac deserved it more than rj. honestly. and i think that an ac-ac clash would be much more exciting and interesting anyway.
whatever it is, hard luck ac. you guys really deserved it more. all the way guys.
eh bt one tink gd abt an ac vs ac semi.it means one will surely get into d finals. btw yea someppl dun realli wna see an ac final.tts their opinion.well. cheers. 🙂
n btw d ref wasnt biased.he missd things from both sides n tt is shown by BOTH sides saying he missed tis n tt.well d ref has reffed my game b4 n hes not reali biased.so tts tt.rj won.acjc lost.maybe theyll meet agn.n ten, well see hus d bttr team.no point trying to point out errors here n tere.next is sa vs rj and acsi vs acjc.woow i wonder how it feels to go agst ure bro sch.or sis sch.i donno.btw cheers ppl.
ACSi for the finals.
ahahah yeaa.peace.yea tts was quite a gd game.gd defence by ac oso.btw hu ferr d finals?
with or without the ref, with or without error, ACJC are NOT the same side you used to see playing free-flowing,exciting rugby. While it’s unfortunate the ref couldn’t spot all the mistakes, I felt the AC defence did a good job at keeping the rafflesians at bay for most of the match, judging by the score
in fact, without the ACSI players,ACJC is just simply a good team,but not those who can win the championship. anyway lets have peace among all users
the ref caused the lost of ACJC… mistakes are inevitable however the ref really missed out a lot of mistakes.. and its really unacceptable.. maybe they should hire “qualified” touch judge for ALL matches…
The ref was standing is a very awkward angle to spot the try. It was very messy and muddy. This can be a very good lesson to referees and touch judges to make a consious effort to be in a position with the best possible angle at such a critical time. Afterall, unlike international rugby, we do not have the assistance of the video ref.
In my opinion both teams fought very hard and the game could go either way. Even if the try wasn’t score in the openjing minutes. It would be either way and probably a penalty the separates the two teams. RJ has their fair share of handing errors due to the weather conditions and ACJ just failed to capitalise on it.
I would say all three teams, SA RJ, ACJ are of the same standard this year. ACSi has that slight edge over the rest and that is prbably due to having a set of players playing together as a team throughout 5 years or 6 years.
Errors are part and parcel of sports, whether by referees or players or coaches. If everything were to run according to plan where there are no mistakes, then what is the point of playing the game on the pitch? Might as well fight a paper war, or like what happened here recently, flame each other online?
Let’s celebrate the spirit of the game, and not dwell on errors made by anybody. At the end of the day, it is not the number of medals hanging in your cupboard that counts, but the character and discipline which are instilled in you that is important.
Hi Neutral, thanks. The referee made an error huh? A really unfortunate error then. It’ll only make the AC boys talk about this for the next few weeks.
spot on les…