The Asian Tri-Nations Tournament came to a rousing close at Yio Chu Kang Stadium on Saturday as Team Singapore clinched a 30-19 victory over Chinese Taipei. A hat trick by Reiner Leong and a try each by Gabriel Lee and Peter McFeely helped the Reds to go up two spots to number 56 in the rugby world ranking.
The tournament opened about a week ago with Team Singapore losing 35-25 to the champions of the tournament, Hong Kong. It was a close game as Singapore was leading till the 75th minute where Hong Kong capitalized on the one man down advantage and scored two tries within five minutes.
“For 75 minutes we played really good but for five minutes we let ourselves down a little bit. We were naive at the end and made some silly mistakes. The game was positive but still a bit disappointing,” James Forrester, coach for Team Singapore’s Rugby Team said.
The Reds had about a week to recuperate before their game with Chinese Taipei, which they eventually won. In between that time, Hong Kong continued with their winning streak as they dominated Chinese Taipei with a 67-5 win.
When asked on how his team performed during the tournament, Craig Hammond, coach for the national Hong Kong Ruby Team shared in rejoice, “It’s good. Clean wins, we won the tournament and we’re very happy with that. We needed a bigger lift after the game with Singapore as we only managed to escape with a couple of tries at the end so we set a bit of a challenging mindset for the boys and they came out on the other side so I’m very proud of the guys.”
Team Singapore managed to use that match as a form of analysis on Chinese Taipei and it definitely helped them to outperform Chinese Taipei yesterday evening. The Chinese were extremely aggressive during the match and they had huge guys taking out the Singapore attack with not much of a problem.
However, Singapore’s players were very technical both on the attack and defense. With teamwork and precise passes, they clinched the victory and came in second in the tournament. Not only that, they have surpassed both Chinese Taipei and Philippines in the world rankings and are now standing at a proud 56.
This year’s tournament was definitely a vast improvement from last year’s where Team Singapore lost both matches. It’s been a good year for the Reds as not only did they go up in the world rankings, they will once again be playing Division 1 Rugby in 2014 after their win over Malaysia at the HSBC Asian 5 Nations.
“It’s good going up two spots but we don’t worry too much about rankings. It’s still a positive though and we’re looking forward to the Asian 5 Nations next year where we’ll be playing these guys (Chinese Taipei) again.” James rejoiced.
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