Contributed by reader Pink
Raffles Institution, Tuesday, August 4, 2009 – St Andrew’s Secondary beat Raffles Institution 27-15 in the first match of the C Division Rugby Championship quarter-finals.
A huge crowd of spectators were on hand to see this crucial game where a victory would be psychologically reassuring for the winners.
The bleachers of Raffles Institution were swarmed with supporters from both schools. Consisting of mainly their parents, their anxiety was deafening.
Within the first ten minutes, the Saints had the first touch down in their back pockets.
Knowing they had to get it together, Raffles took on the challenge and their #7 rose to the occasion, scoring 5 points for Raffles in reply.
The Saints however, did not find it very amusing and scored another 7 points to restore their pride and make it 12-5.
Raffles replied with yet another try in the 19th minute.
During a dispute between both schools, the referee made a decision to award Raffles a penalty which thus caused many of the Saints supporters to yell out “Referee biased! Change the referee!”
RI missed the penalty and a Saints supporter made hurtful remarks.
At half-time, the Saints led 17-10.
In the first 15 minutes of the second half, Raffles supporters had to endure the sight of the Saints scoring two additional tries by their #25.
However, Raffles did not give up, and scored a try after 4 minutes. The Raffles #12 then attempted a rush at the try line but the Saints #13 pulled his shirt from the back and tackled him down. To Raffles’ dismay, the referee overlooked it and no penalty was given.
With 10 minutes left, the Saints scored another 5 points to seal the game 27-15.
At the close of the game, the St Andrew’s #11 was given a yellow card for tackling the Raffles #13. Can you say “ouch”?
All in all, it was certainly a game that was worth skipping an hour of computer gaming for.
hi, i agree with uncle Les as the purpose of this website is to promote sports in Singapore. i hav seen how the site growed and i really appreciate the work from the writers and edditors. For mr JYE, please keep ur aggression on the field and as our coach has indirectly mentioned, we should spend more time to practice as it is much more effective than juz sitting in front of ur com and commenting how u hav played. i hope u can improve ur tackling and get ready for the semis.
P.S.the article is not a historical source for u to analyse
When I read this article, my first thought was: is this the same match I played in?
Regardless of any perceived bias in the article, I think people who post such reviews of matches should at least get the facts right. Being a player on the field itself, i would like to clarify some incongruencies; Firstly, RI did not score thrice…it was twice, with one converted and another penalty placekick making it 5+5+2+3, as mentioned by Saints Rugby.
In addition, both tries were made by Raffles’ no. 7. A clear indicator of the lack of knowledge of the game in the writer is present in his statement that ‘the Saints #13 pulled his [Raffles #12] shirt from the back and tackled him down. To Raffles’ dismay, the referee overlooked it and no penalty was given.’ This is not an offence at all- pulling of shirts is not against the laws of rugby- and the referee was not overlooking it.
The second last paragraph in particular horrified me:’At the close of the game, the St Andrew’s #11 was given a yellow card for tackling the Raffles #13. Can you say “ouchâ€?’How on earth do you get carded for tackling? I hope you meant ‘high tackling’ [above the shoulders] which is dangerous, deserves a card for the offender and was exactly what #11 did.
All in all, this article has seriously misrepresented many facts of the match as well as unprofessionally made grave errors in his judgement of the aspects of a game he is probably unfamiliar with. Though there is nothing wrong with bias [healthy or otherwise] present in such posts, I beg Redsports officials to keep a tighter leash on unreliable, misrepresentative or inaccurate reviews in the future. After all, how many of the 400+ viewers of this article have walked away confused, unjustified, or with the wrong information?
I hope this is not perceived as on attack on the writer; all I want is to correct inconsistencies for the benefit of readers in the spirit of reliability and accuracy over entertainment, as well as to justify all the hard work these players [including me] have put in throughout the season. I am sure many reader’s interests in the game have been sparked and I hope to see you guys at the remaining matches of the C-Div Season! Your support means alot to us!
@A Player in The Match Itself: Happy to have you come in and correct the inconsistencies. That’s the nature of this site.
I have some comments about your statement: “All in all, this article has seriously misrepresented many facts of the match as well as unprofessionally made grave errors in his judgement of the aspects of a game he is probably unfamiliar with.”
The writer is your peer in secondary school. Secondly, the writer is a reader who has volunteered to write about your game. So “unprofessional” is not an accurate word to use. The writer is not a full-time working adult and is not a professional.
Now you know why there are hardly any school rugby stories anymore – I cannot find any volunteers willing to endure unneeded comments from tetchy readers (not referring to you, relax). I’ve had people turn me down about covering school rugby for precisely this stated reason.
If the writer is wrong, we welcome readers to just correct the facts. Why it is not possible for some readers to just correct the wrong information without adding making accusatory comments about the writer is beyond me sometimes.
With regards to another comment: “I beg Redsports officials to keep a tighter leash on unreliable, misrepresentative or inaccurate reviews in the future.”
This is a reader-generated, volunteer-driven site. You send it, we post it.
Nobody covers school sports as a full-time job on Red Sports because nobody pays to read this site.
When the information is wrong, we happily just let readers come in and correct it.
At Red Sports, I keep this site going as a platform to allow people to tell a sports story and to discuss their favourite sport.
We keep it clean, clean out the insults, and let acceptable debate and discussion go through.
ACS(I) will beat Raffles or Saints very easily, judging from the match. Another 39-0 score in the finals again is quite possible.
There are a number of mistakes in the scores accounted for in this article.
First half:
Saints vs RI
7(1 try and converted) : 3(penalty)
12(another try,unconverted) : 8(1 try scored,unconverted)
Second half:
Saints vs RI
17(another try,converted) : 8
22(another try,not converted) : 15(second try,converted)
27(another try,not ocnverted) : 15
Well, most advantage plays were awarded to RI when it was supposed to be Saints! Yet, this referee was the one that referee the ‘B’ Division Police Cup Finals ’09.
haha wow 23 penalties and raffles converted none?
– passerby: I’m sorry? :O
@pink: No need to apologise pink. Nobody attacks our contributors without getting a robust defense from the Red Crew. You keep having fun writing and ignore such comments.
I’m associated with neither school and I agree with Chris that this was fun to read. I was especially tickled by the last line 🙂 Thanks Pink!
Passerby, instead of whining, why not submit your own story, or at least leave a more substantive comment that gives your perspective of the game.
It was not that fun to watch. Saints had 23 penalties awarded against them, RI 4, a penalty every 2.2 minutes! RI centres showed good movement, and their number 8 was strong. Watch out for them.
I found the article rather fun to read. I wasn’t there and yet could sense what the atmosphere at the venue must have been like. So credit to Pink, bias or not.
very obviously this article is more bias toward Raffles and against St Andrew’s, even a bystander like me can tell though it’s such a short article.
@passerby: This is how Red Sports works – you send it, we post it. Readers write based on their perspective. All perspectives are biased.
At Red Sports, we think that’s perfectly ok.
Don’t agree with the article?
Please write your own.
You send it, we post it.