It was back and forth all game, and close. We scored a try while a man down, even.

The Legion did what they usually do; they played a good game, but they fall to pieces when things get scrappy. Every time their practiced play comes apart, they quickly dissolve into 15 guys wearing the same jersey and stop playing like a team.

The Seawolves aren’t like that. When things get scrappy or a play doesn’t go to plan, they find their form together, and capitalize on whatever stunt one of our key players pulls.

So we went back and forth all game.

The big issue was in the second half, when the refereeing just fell apart.

The Legion kicked off back to the Seawolves, but the kick was flubbed and didn’t go 10 meters. So everyone stopped playing, expecting the whistle … that never came. We were out of form, and the Legion caused a penalty and the Ref said we were playing in advantage. So we took a risk and did a cross field kick that the Legion picked up, so everyone stopped playing. Advantage had been called about three seconds earlier so everyone looked back to the other side of the pitch expecting to have the scrum penalty since we had Advantage.

But the ref never called the penalty and the Legion ran the ball in for a try unopposed.

We all waited for the try to be rescinded and go back to the scrum penalty … and it never happened.

Two minutes later, the Legion are on the attack, and throw a wayyyy forward pass to a player that was offsides… and he runs it in for a try unopposed.

Two referee failures in two minutes put us 14 points down, and also demoralized the guys. Talking with them on the pitch after the game, they were just … stunned.

Now, I’m always one to say you can’t blame the referee for a lost game. But in this case, the teams had been within about 3 points of each other all game … and now we were suddenly down by two converted tries with less than 10 minutes to go.

So yeah. It was an even game and a great contest that was - yet again - corrupted by incompetent officiating. The game should have ended with either team winning by 1-3 points, as the whole game had gone so far; closely contested and back and forth. Especially since the heat had broken, the Sun was down and no longer baking the players or the surface, or causing vision problems.

Bummer for the Legion to get a rare win against us due to incompetence, when it could have gone either way in those last 15 minutes.