With a minute to go of the half, and the Singapore yellow card, Singapore had an attacking scrum just outside the Gibraltar 22. Solid scrummaging from the pack, who truly played out of their skins today, put the Singapore scrum half under pressure forcing him to rush his pass. Regularly pushing the Singapore pack back in the scrum, the forwards were also determined in the tackle and aggressive at the breakdown and the turnover that resulted from the rushed pass all started with yet another great Gibraltar scrummage.
Quick ball to the wing via the hands of Jack Milton to Luke Torres who made a silky offload out of the tackle onto Harvey Armstrong who sprinted the remaining 70 metres to the try-line, dotting down under the sticks. Chuqi Cruz successfully kicked the conversion to put Gibraltar 13-6 to the good at half time.
The second half kicked off and Gibraltar were immediately awarded a penalty just inside the Singapore half. Unfortunately the kick was just out of Chuqi’s range and the ball went dead having passed inches under the crossbar. The 22 drop out went straight to Harvey Armstrong who went barn-storming into the Singapore defence.
A great backs’ move sent Teddy Sacarello through the middle, offloading to Joey Garcia who was brought down just a metre short. The next phase led to a penalty for not releasing and Singapore clear their lines once again.
The next 15 minutes saw the home side put the visitors under a substantial amount of pressure which the Gibraltar defence dealt with admirably. Forwards and backs putting their bodies on the line and forcing mistakes from the Singaporean onslaught.
Photographs by kind permission of David at SingaporeMaven
36