Cayman loses nail biter to Jamaica

| 10/04/2012

(CRFU): Cayman lost aheartbreaker to Jamaica on Saturday April 7th in Kingston Jamaica 19-18. The loss, a far cry from Cayman’s 36-24 win over Jamaica last year on home soil sends the Cayman Islands crashing down 7 places in the IRB world rankings and marks the first loss to Jamaica that the Cayman Men’s team has suffered in over a decade. The Cayman team struggled to get their game going at all. The Jamaicans, clearly putting their 68-14 hammering by Mexico in late March behind them were big and physical and took the game to Cayman with some huge confrontations.

Cayman were clearly thrown off with Jamaica taking a 13 to 0 lead in the first five minutes. The Cayman team set up some great opportunities but squandered them all before Venassio Tokatokavanua scored for Cayman and Morgan Hayward converted to bring the game to 13 to 7. Hayward then slotted a penalty to take the half time score to 13 to 10 Jamaica.

In the second half Ben Blair crashed over to take the score to Cayman 15 and Jamaica 13. Jamaica came straight back with a penalty to make the score 16 to 15 to Jamaica. In the last 8 minutes Cayman were awarded another penalty which Hayward slotted giving the Cayman side and 18 to 16 lead. With the last play of the game Cayman won a line out and simply needed to get the ball out of bounds to win, there was a mix up and the resultant penalty to Jamaica was kicked and the international test won with the last play of the game 19 to 18.

So after the first round of matches the Standings are as follows

Team     Played Won Lost Bonus Total
Mexico   1           1       0      1            5
Jamaica 2          1       1      0           4
Cayman 1          0        1     1            1

Moving into the last game in the pool stage for round 1 Cayman play Mexico at the Cayman Big Game 1 www.caymanbiggame.com at Truman Bodden on April 21st.

Cayman must beat Mexico by a margin greater than seven points while not allowing Mexico to score four tries. This will tie up the table at 5 points each but Cayman will then go through by the tournament rules so the Cayman Big Game is all ornothing to Mexico and Cayman while Jamaica are out of the RWC 2015.

 

Category: Sports

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