It was a festival of free-flowing rugby, as the UM Wolves men’s team breezed to a record win over Stompers last Saturday in what was their first match of 2025.
The Wolves were coming off the back of an unbeaten start to the season which had until then stretched to six games and were looking forward to kicking off a run of five matches in five weekends on the right foot.
It took all of seven minutes for the Wolves to break down the Stompers defence, as a Gabriel Seychell offload put Connor Muir into free real estate and made for an easy walk-in try. Muir has been the top points scorer for Wolves this season but he was yet to get a try to his name until this match.
The floodgates then opened: tries were scored in the 12th, 15th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 28th, 32nd, and 38th minutes with no Stompers reply.
These came courtesy of Virain Hariramani, Daniel Ghirlando, Axel Jeffers, Muir once again, Jeffers on the end of a deft chip, Mikel Dominguez Agirre, Keegan Weintraud, and Kurt Aquilina who took advantage of a ball spilling out of a ruck to run 60 metres in for a try.
All tries but one were converted by Muir, making the score 61-0 at half time.
The second half started in much the same vein: Dominguez Agirre produced a trademark run, fending off several tackles as he went over to score, while Cody Schmidt got in on the action as well as he kicked a turned over ball from inside the Wolves half once, twice, and then a third before picking it up and scoring.
Ghirlando was put in for his second try of the day by Philippe Ioffe – who assisted four tries on the day – straight from the kick-off to continue to amp the scoreline.
The tempo began to drop as the Wolves emptied the bench, with all substitutes coming on to get some competitive minutes under their belts.
Still though, Benjamin Johnston and Schmidt added a couple more tries to the scorecard, and Muir’s conversions brought the final score up to 90-0 at full time.
The scoreline is a new record for the UM Wolves men’s team, eclipsing the 87-5 cup win that the club produced over Overseas in the first match of this season.
It also came almost a year to the day since the team registered its first ever competitive win and almost three years to the day since the club’s first ever competitive match in Maltese club rugby – both of those games being, ironically, also against Stompers.
The men now gear up for an important, top of the table, clash against Kavallieri RFC set to take place on Saturday 25 January at 15:00.
Starting 15: Michael Galea, Jonathan Pace, Sven Camilleri, Kurt Aquilina, Mikel Dominguez Agirre, Gareth Blundell, George Strickland, Keegan Weintraud, Cody Schmidt, Gabriel Seychell, Daniel Ghirlando, Connor Muir, Philippe Ioffe, Axel Jeffers, Virain Hariramani
Subs Used: Kurt Sciberras, Nick Xuereb, Leonard Schembri, Agustin Rabini, Marco Gauci, Isaac Scerri, Benjamin Johnston, Matthias Vassallo
