The Port Alberni Black Sheep fell 32-27 to the Cowichan Piggies in exhibition action on Saturday, Nov. 24.
The story for the home team, according to head coach Jas Purewal, was a lack of organization.
“When we did play with a little bit of flow, we scored some very nice tries,” he said. “We were lacking our structure and we didn’t really do enough work to help each other.”
The Sheep were playing short one man, as a number of players had other commitments. By half time, the Sheep were down 14-3, and weren’t able to gain the advantage over the Piggies. Scorers for the Black Sheep were Bob Brown, Ty Shannon, Maxx Bodaly and Ryan Turner, with Jayson Matthews adding one penalty kick and two conversions.
Purewal said the team showed “a lot of great efforts individually,” but had trouble playing together as a unit. The Sheep paid the price for this on a number of “lousy turnovers,” he added. Purewal gave full credit to Cowichan for picking up on some of these mistakes and taking advantage of them.
Luckily for the Sheep, Saturday’s matchup was only an exhibition game.
“That was a good thing,” said Purewal. “But still, at the end of the day when you pull the jersey off it doesn’t really matter what it was. You play for the win.”
Next weekend, the Black Sheep host Abbotsford. Kick off is at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 24.
