A clinical performance on Saturday allowed the men’s team to continue their win streak this season, extending it to five out of five matches.
The men faced Overseas for the third time this season, with this being the second occasion in the MRFU Rugby Championship that the two sides met.
And much like in the previous two occasions, it was a one-sided affair with the Wolves putting on a clinical performance, resulting in a 74-3 win.
It was largely one-way traffic in the first half: Cody Schmidt scored a hat-trick within 25 minutes, Axel Jeffers and Philippe Ioffe scored a brace each and Mikel Dominguez Agirre was back among the tries as well, grabbing one of his own.
Virain Hariramani successfully converted five of those tries, while Overseas put three points on the board courtesy of a penalty.
This made the score 50 points to 3 in Wolves’ favour going into half time.
The comfortable margin allowed head coach Keenan Kleinsmith to experiment with the team’s tactical shape and to also empty the substitutes bench, with some players getting valuable competitive minutes under their belts.
Four more tries followed in the second half, with Philippe Ioffe securing his hat-trick at the end of a well-worked set play, Mikel Dominguez Agirre scoring another one off a trademark Cody Schmidt cross-field kick, Jonathan Pace driving over almost unopposed, and Kurt Aquilina scything through the Overseas defence after an inside ball from fly-half Gabriel Seychell.
Philippe Ioffe added four points to the score with two conversions, making the final score 74-3.
Noteworthy from this match were two senior debuts: Ryder Croft and Crispin Gauci Peresso both came off the bench for their first ever competitive appearances in green.
Both joined the club last year directly from recruitment efforts at G.F Abela Junior College – which are supported by Forvis Mazars – and they became the 92nd and 93rd players to represent Wolves in competitive matches respectively.
Ryder is also now the youngest ever player to play a competitive senior match for Wolves, having come off the bench at the age of 17 years, five months and 14 days.
The men’s team currently sit atop the league table with a maximum haul of 20 points from four matches. They will face Falcons in a crunch match on Saturday as they aim to end the year on a high.
Starting 15: Michael Galea, Jonathan Pace, Sven Camilleri, Agustin Rabini, Mikel Dominguez, Gareth Blundell, George Strickland, Keegan Weintraud, Cody Schmidt, Gabriel Seychell, Simon Borg, Virain Hariramani, Philippe Ioffe, Daniel Ghirlando, Axel Jeffers
Subs Used: Nigel Borg, Leonard Schembri, Kurt Sciberras, Kurt Aquilina, Federico Diaz, Crispin Gauci Peresso, Francesco Pace Parascandalo, Ryder Croft
