Clay­ton Clarke

Cana­di­an tour­ing club Dog Riv­er Howlers of Saskatchewan, Cana­da up­set lo­cal favourite Har­vard 22–15 to cap­ture the Carib Cup, in a mud­dy but thrilling fi­nale in the men's di­vi­sion, at the sec­ond an­nu­al Carib To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al 7s tour­na­ment, at the Bon Ac­cord Recre­ation Ground, yes­ter­day.

Howlers fin­ished un­beat­en through the round-robin com­pe­ti­tion in­to the fi­nal against Har­vard, which sim­i­lar­ly won every match be­fore bow­ing out by a con­vert­ed try, even af­ter a strong come­back in the sec­ond half. Scot­tish club Ecosse, mean­while, land­ed the cham­pi­ons' tro­phy, 12 gold medals and US$5,000 af­ter a 39–0 crush­ing vic­to­ry over an­oth­er Cana­di­an out­fit- Beavers.

In the men's fi­nal, Howlers be­gan with a strong at­tack in the moist, mud­dy con­di­tions be­fore end­ing the half up 22–0.

Jor­dan Ross opened with a try on the left flank, fol­lowed by two Gor­don McRo­ry ef­forts on ei­ther side, be­fore a con­vert­ed James Ack­er try left T&T's most dom­i­nant club in 2012 ab­solute­ly stunned.

How­ev­er, Har­vard re­turned in the sec­ond with no in­di­ca­tion that it was trail­ing by such a mar­gin as it ral­lied back, with two tries from skip­per and Guyanese in­ter­na­tion­al Claudius Butts, the first and the fi­nal try, with Ryan Gon­salves scor­ing the one in be­tween.

In the end, Howlers' first half dom­i­nance proved too much for Lar­ry Mendez's team. Howlers lift­ed the Carib Cup, while Har­vard took the Zoti Cup, af­ter an un­fa­mil­iar run­ner-up fin­ish, in what was oth­er­wise an ab­solute­ly out­stand­ing sea­son for the Ser­pen­tine Road-based Club.

Howlers coach, Derek Day­puck said he was im­pressed by lo­cal club. "We played a good team. We knew they could win. We held on af­ter scor­ing the first 20 points and then de­fend­ed."

Day­puck added that play­ing on the slip­pery turf was a se­ri­ous chal­lenge but his team kept its fo­cus.

De­spite the loss, Butts was proud of his team's ef­fort, which was eight points short of se­cur­ing an eighth ti­tle for the cam­paign.

"The ear­ly goals caused our heads to drop as we were put on our back foot and it was dif­fi­cult af­ter that. We tried in the sec­ond half but couldn't."

Har­vard ad­vanced to the fi­nal af­ter a top placed fin­ish in Group A, for a spot against Howlers which was sim­i­lar­ly dom­i­nant with all wins to lead Group B, both of which be­gan on Sat­ur­day and con­clud­ed yes­ter­day.

In the women's ti­tle de­cider, Sandy Belfast was the stand-out per­former for the Scots, as she opened the scor­ing and fin­ished on four tries for an easy win over the Cana­di­ans.

Led by skip­per So­nia Green, Ecosse held a 12–0 half time ad­van­tage, be­fore scor­ing a fur­ther 25 points to take top spot, in what was oth­er­wise a com­pet­i­tive women's di­vi­sion.

The run­ner up, Beavers won US$2,500, sil­ver medals and the TDC cup. Host To­ba­go RFC se­cured the third spot beat­ing Bor­der Reivers of Scot­land by 21–5, in the men's third-place play­off.

To­ba­go cap­tain Keishorn Walk­er, who was the MVP at the re­cent­ly staged in­vi­ta­tion­al sev­ens tour­na­ment in Cu­ba, opened and closed the score for the home team. The Cas­tara res­i­dent had a good all-round game help­ing out in de­fence frus­trat­ing many of Reivers' at­tacks. Melvin East­man al­so got on the score sheet for To­ba­go.

Howlers ladies got by At­lanta Har­le­quins 20-10 to take the women's third prize of US$1,500. Har­le­quins was re­ward­ed with US$1,000.

This year's tour­na­ment at­tract­ed 16 men's and ten women's teams. Ac­tion has end­ed, but the tourists will taste more of what To­ba­go has to of­fer with the Carib Beach Par­ty, at Store Bay, to­day.