Overseas too good for Kavallieri

Overseas 37
Kavallieri 10

Neil Galea

In the beginning of the match,Overseas started with a bang scoring two tries by Wright and Van  Reeven and one conversion netted by Wright himself  inside the first five minutes of the match.

The crunching and intelligent runs of Nick Wright enabled Overseas to start on the right platform and Kavallieri found themselves on the back foot.

The advantage gave Overseas to produce the ideal game plan – let Kavallieri enjoy the majority of ball possession and counterattack their opponents using a wide array of combinations between their lethal centre halves, flyhalf and full back.

A major factor that played a big role in favour of Overseas landslide advantage in the first half was that full back Boland was continuosly supporting Nick Wright’s driving runs.

In fact Boland managed to score two beautiful tries meanwhile Overseas new signing from Alligators , scrum half Beppe Sammut scored a solo try from half pitch.

Overseas had  a win in their sights thanks to a huge 27 point lead over Kavallieri by the end of the first half.

Interesting to note that on many occassions Kavallieri were very close to Overseas’ try line but due to a massive number of unavailable players through injury and unavailability, they failed to score a try.

In fact they opted to use their forwards since most of the back line were new recruits or forwards that were chosen to play out of position.

In the second half,Kavallieri continued to exert territorial advantage over Overseas but the lack of imaginative runs to break Overseas disciplined defence started to have an undesired effect on the game plan opted by their coach Matt Emerson.

As for Overaseas, coached by Alan McKay,were content to sit back and let Kavallieri continue with ball possession without scoring any points on the scoreboard.

In the middle of the second half, Overseas Kerry Kemper was sinned binned by the excellent referre Da Silva and Kavallieri profited from their numerical advantage scoring a driving run by their pack completed by their evergreen flanker Daniel Grima.

It semed that Kavallieri were back on track but Overseas Boland completed his personal hat trick of tries to put the scoreline beyond Kavallieri’s desperate aspirations to salvage the match.

This did not deter the current champions to pressure Overseas again in their own half and the team mostly composed by expatriates lost their cool when their Frenchman Mestre was also yellow carded for a serious infringement.

Kavallieri were on a high, with Overseas having two players on the bin, they continued with their pack possession.

Overseas  lost their fitness level and managed to put Kavallieri under psychological pressure.

In fact Kavallieri’s Bonavia and Borg were also yellow carded and such penalties imposed by Da Silva worked in Overseas’ favour.

Although Kavallieri had two less players on the field they scored a second try thanks to Daniel Grima but Boland continued to create havoc in Kavallieri’s defence scoring a fourth try which is no mean feat.

Good to note that apart from Wright and Boland for Overseas, Kavallieri players Joseph Cutajar and Daniel Grima,scorer of two tries, played at a canter.

It will be interesting to follow the incoming weeks of this competition if Kavallieri and Overseas will manage to leapfrog Stompers and win a right to contest another much awaited match between these two sides.