The SRU League Championships reached the business end of the season on 24th March with the semi finals played on a wet and humid Queenstown Stadium pitch. Bedok Kings RFC 2nd (“Kings”) took on Wanderers RFC Gents (“Wanderers”) in the 1st semi-final of the day and the second semi finals saw Bucks RFC 2nd (“Bucks”) take on SCC Tankards (“Tankards”).
Right from the kick off, Wanderers grabbed the initiative and was attacking from the outset. The initial flurry saw a series of knock on and penalties committed, with the King’s a man down after an intentional knock on sin bin after 5 minutes. Wanderers failed to capitalize and the game was bogged down by the wet weather conditions which saw numerous scrums for knock ons.
The first real action came from a seemingly non-threatening box kick from Kings’ veteran scrumhalf Andrew Lee that led to a mix up between 2 Wanderers backs as they clumsily got into each other’s way to gift the ball to Kings flanker Kaisen Leck to run in under the post for the first try of the game. This opened the scoring for the Kings as flanker Ivan Tan scored to increase the lead to 12-0. Wanderers answered back through hooker Francisco Vargas via a lineout maul drive for an unconverted try. However, Kings replied swiftly, with try from Kings No. 8 Shannon Sin who broke through the middle whilst juggling the ball to dot down under the post. Sin would score his 2nd try of the game after some great offloading skills minutes later as the Kings went into the break 24-5.
Both head coaches conducted intense team talks for their respective players during halftime, but that did not seem to curb the mistakes from both sides. A nice lineout move by Wanderers saw their lock Conor Brennan go over the whitewash untouched for an unconverted try to narrow the lead. Wanderers then started to turn on the pressure against Kings, with prop Khairulnafiz going and scoring with a pick and go, reducing the lead to just 7 points. However, the reduced lead would not last for long as a rare foray into the Wanderers’ half after the restart saw Kings go over for a converted try via Kaisen Leck again after a nice offload from lock Sonny Dutta.
Wanderers resumed their pressure right away from the restart and replied with a converted try via prop Kris Kowaliuk. However, by then it was too little too late as the referee blew for fulltime after another knock on shortly after. Kings advanced to the finals with a 31-24 victory over Wanderers.
