League champions St. Peters and Isipathana powered their way to finals of the President’s Trophy 2023 Knockouts overcoming Joes and Zahira respectively in the semi finals. “They got what it takes to tear apart the Isipathana defence with their Forwards,” was the speculation made by an unsuspecting columnist who was forced to gulp his own words, when a resurrected Pathana Forwards Pack, ripped apart a very strong Zahirian Forwards unit to shreds, by playing their best frontend game this season. It’s not that Pathana never played a hard Forwards game this season; they showed their prowess in their opening game against Kingswood, where they exhibited solid Forwards skills combined perfectly with their usuals.
The mammoth fault they committed this season is that they didn’t use the skill constantly and keep it polished, hence paying the price in the Super Round games. Had they played the Forwards game alike, the league final would have had a slightly different outcome.
Zahira’s mauls were not allowed to move even an inch by the petite but mighty Pathanians. In addition, they defended the Zahira pick ‘n drives pretty well; so well, that sometimes the drives were driven backward. Moreover, to the surprise of the spectators and the bewilderment of the Zahirians, Pathana kept drilling through the Zahira Forwards effortlessly and scored 4 Tries either exclusively or assisted by their frontends.
Both teams played the kicking game, being quite anxious and greedy for territory, with Pathana winning the mini-battle for two reasons. Zahira could not find touch almost all of the time during open play, nor were they able to effectively chase down their kicks to move play to the opponent’s grid. Secondly, Pathana found touch more often than not, but when they failed, the Zahira Backs were too slow after they received the kicks, as the Greens made instant appearances in front of them, every time they tried to work the line.
Though Zahira started out their ultimate venture on a positive note and was full of energy as usual, they lost the plot, enthusiasm and energy after the breather. Seemed like the kicking boots of Mohamed Saad were ‘under the weather’, in a literal sense as well, as Zahira never threw in anything near the Pathana 10.
Zahira’s Backs failed to impress in this game, as they seemed to have a weak link that kept slowing, or rather stopping their line, thus Pathana’s rush defence didn’t really have to rush it, to contain the Zahira Backs. During an instance when Zahira’s pick ‘n drive was not contained by Pathana, they lost a Try scoring opportunity very close to the Pathana goal line, due to their turbo-charged drives, driving way too far, and out of reach for reinforcements to arrive, before the Jackler forced a holding on infringement.
The highlight of this game was that the first infringement occurred in the 17th minute of the game, which was a very rare occurrence in this season. I hope to see many more matches with such discipline in the future as well.