An­drew Gioan­net­ti

Heart­break de­scend­ed over the lo­cal rug­by fra­ter­ni­ty last evening af­ter an im­proved Ca­lyp­so War­riors fell to a harsh 26-18 de­feat by USA South in the fi­nal of the North Amer­i­can and Caribbean Rug­by As­so­ci­a­tion (Nacra) Rug­by Cham­pi­onship, at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege Ground, Mu­cu­rapo Road.The win grant­ed the res­olute Amer­i­cans the tier three ti­tle for the first time since their in­au­gu­ra­tion, while T&T was made to wait at least an­oth­er year for re­gion­al suc­cess. T&T last won the Nacra Cham­pi­onship in 2008.

The weath­er and ground con­di­tions could not have been bet­ter for a fi­nal, with the ex­cep­tion of the odd gust of wind which made it tricky for both teams' des­ig­nat­ed kick­ers. And, very lit­tle sep­a­rat­ed ei­ther side. Both teams had their share of ad­van­tages, with the 18-18 dead­lock in the last 20 min­utes il­lus­trat­ing the strength and de­ter­mi­na­tion of both out­fits. In the end, it was a suc­cess­ful penal­ty from the pin-point out­side half Lu­cas Baistroc­chi, a con­stant thorn in T&T's side, and a try from Chance Doyle with two min­utes re­main­ing in the fix­ture which gave vic­to­ry to USA South.

The open­ing two tries from the home team were scored by Joseph Quashie in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, as the cen­tre was played the ball on­to the left side on both oc­ca­sions, be­fore he out­paced a stretched and nap­ping USA de­fence. Un­for­tu­nate­ly for T&T, both of his two tries and the 46th minute try from Wayne Kel­ly went un­con­vert­ed, in ad­di­tion to a cou­ple missed penal­ties from the des­ig­nat­ed kick­ers Kel­son Fi­garo and Jonathan O'Con­nor. The match had the po­ten­tial to swing strong­ly in favour of the host team which twice held the ad­van­tage. Lead­ing to­ward the end of the first pe­ri­od, T&T led 13-11, but an awk­ward bounce wrong-foot­ed the T&T full back Keis­hon Walk­er near to his try line, al­low­ing USA cen­tre Amir Khan to sprint on­to for an easy try. The dead­ly Baistroc­chi then con­vert­ed as USA went in­to the break with a 18-13 lead. Kel­ly's 46th minute equal­iz­ing try gave T&T a re­al­is­tic hope of find­ing yet an­oth­er ad­van­tage, but it again went un­con­vert­ed, and no fur­ther tries or penal­ties were scored by the Ca­lyp­so War­riors. USA South, even as it re­mained ground­ed on its back foot for al­most all of the re­main­ing 35 min­utes, re­mained vig­i­lant and cap­i­tal­ized on its rare op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Chants of "T&T, T&T" from the 200-plus sup­port­ers could not spur the team on, as its luck fell just short.Clear­ly de­flat­ed, T&T coach Lar­ry Mendez rued the loss and felt his team was on the wrong end of the re­sult, even as both teams per­formed to a high stan­dard."Com­ing out and los­ing in that fi­nal is ob­vi­ous­ly go­ing to be a hard pill for us to swal­low, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the kind of prepa­ra­tion we put in­to it, with the (lim­it­ed) re­sources that we have..."He con­tin­ued, "Con­grat­u­la­tions to USA. They played very well. (How­ev­er) by no means should we have end­ed up in this los­ing po­si­tion.""The match was lost, I would think, in the (lack of im­ple­men­ta­tion of the) game plan. We fell short there, and be­cause of (a lack of) dis­ci­pline. But, I think com­ing out of this, the play­ers will see what it tru­ly means to be­come cham­pi­ons. It will take a lot of com­mit­ment. Def­i­nite­ly what is need­ed is more games. It is al­most im­pos­si­ble for a na­tion­al team to have three games in a year and be suc­cess­ful. We need more, at least 10 games a year to al­most as­sure suc­cess."Sev­er­al mem­bers of the 15s team will be back in train­ing next month to be­gin prepa­ra­tion for the Nacra re­gion­al sev­ens tour­na­ment, which takes place in No­vem­ber.