The victorious defeat of “Strela-Ak Bars”: Kazan is in the final!

The day of the bearded bombardiers

The home victory in Kazan 30:13 gave the rugby players an advantage of approximately two and a half converted tries with a penalty. This is a certain psychological advantage, but the hosts of the field rushed, so to speak, straight from the ship to the ball, scoring a try already in the sixth minute through the efforts of Nicolaas Oosthuizen. Before this moment they had refused to kick a penalty, which is characteristic of the Krasnoyarsk team, and now the decision was fully justified. There Timur Maslov also converted the try, reducing the Kazan team's initial advantage.

Fortunately, the guests literally in the return attack answered with the same, also refusing to kick a penalty, then pushing the melon in a maul as close as possible to the opponents' in-goal area, where Rikert Korff scored, and Kobus Marais converted. Two bearded men had distinguished themselves by the 8th minute, although the established score 7:7 changed nothing in the preliminary layouts.

But there was no need to think about this for long, since in the 11th minute the Krasnoyarsk player François Oosterhuizen scored, finishing after a combination an attack that was developing very promisingly on the right half of the field but was finished on the left. However, as were all three scoring attacks on the part of both teams.

An invasion of the elements

Meanwhile in Krasnoyarsk it began to rain, in its brevity more reminiscent of a summer, mushroom rain. To its drizzle Timur Maslov, who had replaced the hosts' regular kicker Ramil Gaisin, kicked a penalty 17:7, to which the Kazan team, again as at the start of the duel, found a mirror answer. It was Marais in the 26th minute who kicked a penalty 17:10, which was compounded by the sending-off of the Krasnoyarsk player Peter Jacobs, who went off to drink coffee of the same-name brand, finding himself out of the game for 10 minutes. Trouble does not come alone: along with Marais's penalty and Maslov's sending-off, here François Oosterhuizen also received an injury, after which he was led away under the arms by two members of the Krasnoyarsk team.

The next upset of the Krasnoyarsk team consisted in the fact that at the very end of the half the hosts had a real chance to score a try. Moreover, the melon was returned to them, since at first the Kazan team defended themselves, violating the offside rule, into which François Nodier fell. But further they stood to the death and went to the break with the score 10:17. The Krasnoyarsk team needed to score at least two tries with one conversion to go ahead based on the results of the two meetings.

By the way, besides the Krasnoyarsk semifinal, it is necessary to recall that the country's championship has ended in the division one level lower, in which “Baltic Storm” outplayed Krasnodar's “Kuban.” This does not happen for the first time, but now it is important that the Kaliningrad team strives to enter the composition of the Super League teams, becoming the eighth team in the strongest division. It is no secret that the loss of Novokuznetsk, Dzerzhinsk and the capital's CSKA led to the fact that seven teams fight for medals in Russian rugby. Now simultaneously with the semifinals and the matches for medals, the teams of the lower part of the table play out places from fifth to seventh. It is clear that eight teams would allow composing a more balanced calendar of games, when all teams would be involved in a round, and not one would rest, as happened this year. Therefore we await Kaliningrad.

Meanwhile toward the end of the half at the Krasnoyarsk stadium, four elements visited at once. The rain in the end was replaced by snow; all this happened in sunlight that did not warm, and besides, the wind blew. But on the field it was maximally hot.

Tromp started, Omari finished

In the second half the Kazan team also had to substitute their legionnaire, as Krasnoyarsk had done earlier, removing Oosterhuizen from the field. In the first half it was noticeable that Deon Carstens had certain health problems; in the second half he left. Moreover, during the game the Kazan team changed hookers, since Robert Sutidze left when Magomed Davudov came onto the field, after which Davudov received a leg injury, serious enough that for him too, it seems, the season is over, as for Oosterhuizen.

But here we are running ahead, both with forecasts and with the description of the events on the field, where at first Timur Maslov kicked a penalty, making the Krasnoyarsk team's advantage twofold, 20:10. It became quite alarming, since the Kazan team's advantage in points shrank to one try with a conversion. But then everything became much more pleasant for the Kazan team. A small mistake by a Krasnoyarsk player, who made a chip kick that was caught by Johan Tromp, led to a try by the “strelki.” Tromp had already been remembered in the first half for a spectacular jump that kept the ball in the possession of the Kazan team. And he caught someone else's chip kick, after which he immediately picked up speed, allowing him to burst as close as possible to the opponents' in-goal area. There it also helped that Tromp kicked the ball forward, striking the melon with his foot, after which Eddie Ludik took possession of it. Several quick passes to the wing, made by Stepan Khokhlov, Kobus Marais, German Davydov, led to the fact that on the edge of the field Omari Grinyaev scored a try without any resistance. 20:15 in the 53rd minute, after Marais missed the conversion.

Less than half an hour remained to hold out until reaching the final.

The Kazan defense turned into reinforced concrete

The remaining time until the end of the match turned into a triumph of the Kazan defense. In the 60th minute Krasnoyarsk was at maximum proximity to the in-goal area of the “strelki," who were saved by Nikita Vavilin, but the referee saw a violation of the rules in this, sending off Vavilin and giving the Krasnoyarsk team a repeat chance, which they themselves missed when putting in two lineouts. More precisely, at first the Kazan player Bogdan Fedotko corrected the ball thrown in from the sideline, and then the Krasnoyarsk team put it in with a violation of the rules. In our description this took a couple of lines, but in real time it was two or three minutes, when the hosts of the field tried to score, being at maximum proximity.

Having fought off once, the Kazan team after ten minutes of game time again faced the need to defend their in-goal area, and, perhaps, it was precisely this game element that became the main one in achieving the overall victory. Krasnoyarsk again found itself at maximum proximity; Timur Maslov was on the move, and there remained a couple of steps to the in-goal area, instead of which he made a pass closer to the sideline. It came out inaccurate; the ball went out over the line. Having regained the ball, the Krasnoyarsk team even scored it in the in-goal area, but moments earlier they had committed a forward pass. The Kazan team had not simply a defense, but Fort Knox; moreover, Pieter Steenkamp, who had replaced Marais, kicked a penalty, setting the final score 18:20.

Meanwhile the semifinal matches showed once again the fallacy of seemingly one-hundred-percent forecasts. We expected a struggle in Krasnoyarsk too, and there was one, but the unpredictability moved not to the capital of Siberia, but to the capital of Russia. In Moscow the Dynamo team hosted “Krasny Yar," after the away victory 30:21. But the guests for practically 100 minutes of the match showed something incredible. At first they equalized at the very end of regulation time, when Khushnud Sanginov scored and Jason Taumalolo converted the try. The score of the Moscow game became 44:35 in favor of “Krasny Yar," and this meant that they had made up a 9-point deficit. The game went into extra time, when the first five-minute period passed without scored points; in the second the Dynamo team scored and converted a try. To which the Krasnoyarsk team answered with exactly the same, playing shorthanded after a sending-off. The game, demonstrated live on the “Match TV” channel, broke the broadcasters' planned broadcasting schedule, but it was impossible to tear oneself away from watching this game. The Dynamo team, having just stopped someone else's try, rushed into the attack and scored themselves, after which Krasnoyarsk increased the already added time by about three minutes, clinging to the last chance. In the end they won the match itself 51:49, but based on the results of the double confrontation they were forced to yield their place in the final to the Dynamo team.

We await a repeat of last year's final of the country's championship

In the dry residue: on October 18 in Moscow the final of the Russian championship will take place between the capital's “Dynamo” and Kazan's “Strela-Ak Bars.” Because the “Dynamo” stadium will be used for a match of the football team of the same name, the final will be held at “Moskvich.” Krasnoyarsk will watch the derby of “Yenisey-STM” and “Krasny Yar” in the bronze confrontation.

The pre-match layouts suggest that “Dynamo” is the clear favorite. The Muscovites have won everything possible this season, starting from the Super Cup, then the Russian Cup, won the Spartakiad of the Peoples of Russia in rugby sevens, lead in the country's rugby sevens championship and far more often came out victorious in head-to-head confrontation with the Kazan team. But the events of this Sunday showed how mistaken pre-match layouts can be. The match with “Yenisey-STM” in Kazan showed that the “strelki” have an excellent attack; the game in Krasnoyarsk demonstrated the reliability of their defense. Bronze from the Spartakiad is extremely little to satiate the appetite of Kazan — the capital of champions.