The Toronto Buccaneers added one of the most significant milestones to the clubs’ thirty six year history this past Saturday, fielding a junior side for the first time.

A warm sunny morning at Eglinton Flats presented the Buccs U16 with perfect conditions to kick off their season in style and the crowd in attendance were not disappointed. Winning the coin toss, Buccs U16 captain Victor Cho chose to play against the sun and put pressure on Brampton by kicking to them first. A slight miss kick from the drop out allowed Brampton a first scrum. From the first hit it was clear that the front row of Victor, Bobby & Izhan were going to give Brampton a tough afternoon up front, getting a nudge on at the first engagement which continued through the full match. The Buccs put pressure on Brampton early on with some ferocious tackling, especially around the breakdown with the backrow and centres making some great hits. The pressure from the defense told and the Buccs scored three tries in quick succession with winger Idris claiming the first ever try for the Buccs U16. The pick of them (and the match) being a fine move from first phase; a lineout was cleanly won and a fine pass from Maqadas to Ahmed got the move going, a miss pass to Usman at outside centre followed and a further long pass found Faisal on the wing who outstripped the defense to score one of the best tries scored by the Buccs (Senior or Junior) for some time. The try scored by flanker Josh was just reward for his efforts during the whole match with some great first up hits and cover tackles.

With the introduction of a few substitutes at half-time the Buccs kept the pressure up on Brampton and continued to dominate possession and territory. Some great work from Kamal, Ali, Brian & Zulfiqar at the lineout continued to give the Buccs backline good ball to work with. Brampton did however get back in the match and with some great support work from their forwards allowed them to score two quality tries of their own; the Buccs took their foot off the gas for a while and were punished accordingly which we will need to focus on for the next match. The rest of the match was quite even but in the last 5 min the Buccs finally got some momentum back and from a quick tap penalty, Izhan powered his way through three tackles to score a great front row try.

The Buccs finished the game off with one further try to give a final score of 36-14 and provided the team with a fine win in their first ever match. The back row of Josh/Bilaal/Qudrat/Malik put in some great tackling and definitely got the Buccs on the front foot, adding in the fine passing and footwork from Ahmad at flyhalf to Sajad at full back this was a polished performance from 1 to 22 and stands the Buccs in good stead for the rest of the season. A final note goes to captain Victor who led his team from the front, never took a step backwards and showed great respect to both the referee and opposition.

Training continues Tuesday and Thursday and it is important that the hard work continues in the week to allow more performances of this standard to be attainable.

Go Buccs!!!