St. Catharines, ON - Friday in St. Catharines the Gryphons Men's Rugby team improved to 6-0 with a 55-20 win over the Brock Badgers.

Although the Badgers have a brand new turf field on campus, this match was played on their old grass pitch in an attempt to slow down the Gryphons attack. While the Gryphons were adjusting to the conditions, the home team was off and running...literally. The Badgers opened the match by slipping through a seam and scoring a Try just 37 seconds into the game.
 
After the slow start, the Gryphons would regroup and came up with the next score thanks to a number of well worked phases, which saw Guelph control the ball for nearly 10 straight minutes.  Max Van Dijk eventually went over right under the posts for the try with Jon West adding the convert to make it 7-5 Gryphons. The Gryphons again controlled possession for a number of phases before Scott Simmonds, showing no signs of fatigue from the Men's Hockey game on Wednesday night, broke the line, chipped past the last defenders and outpaced them to the ball to dive on top of it for another 5.

  Jon West was the next to go over for Guelph as he dotted down under the posts for his first of 3 tries on the day and added the converts to make it 19-5. The next try would belong to the whole forward pack, as a well executed lineout followed by a powerful driving maul eventually saw Blake Aram touch down to add another 5 to make 24-5. Adam Maahs would finish the Gryphons scoring for the half after receiving a great offload from rookie flanker Marcello Wainwright and dotted down in the corner to make it 29-5. Brock would add a second try at the death to make it 29-10 at half.
  The second half started just as quickly as the first, but this time it was Jon West going over for his second try just 45 seconds into the half.  He would add the extras to make it 36-10. He wasn't quite finished as within 2 minutes he was in again after a very well worked training ground move to score under the posts. Again he was good on the extras making it 43-10.  The final scores on the day would come from first year speedsters Andrew Douglas and Darien Hewey each notching a try, for Hewey it was his first as a Gryphon.  West added another convert to finish the day with 25 points.
Brock would add 2 more tries throughout the half to make the final score 55-10.
Standout performances were delivered by first year winger Andrew Douglas who was a threat any time he touched the ball, showing blistering pace and footwork.
Although the coaches were happy with the performance, the focus at practice this week will certainly be on defence leading into a big game against Western.