Horse - trading???

This Saturday welcomes back to the House Of Windsor last year’s CW Player-Of-The-Year, Clayton “Burger” Thornber, Fergus Hall, Beau Parker, Joey Erlic, Mac Bos, Jeff Nishima, Luke McClosky, Evan Cambridge, Rhys Prevost and Morgan Tate ( and their cohorts) when the Vikes visit. These boys kicked off their rugby carers with CW, many as long ago Minis or U14’s.

Perhaps it is only fair that in return, CW has welcomed Andrew Tiedeman, Jake Ilnicki and the latest of the grads – Keenan Horton – very useful trades! Three seasons ago, Andrew and Toby Peyton came to The Tricolors and in his first year, Andrew took over the Captaincy, a role he held at UVic for some three seasons. He has returned from a year of “pro” in Auch and is playing some of the best rugby of his club career. Jake and Keenan joined us this year. Jake, after a part season in Kiwi land has happily joined brother Riley in the Tricolors’ pack. Each game he has shown increased comfort, packing in a FRF with the likes of Tieds, Braddock, Hubert, DJ Sears, Middleton, Barkwill and Chapman. Of course, Daumer is the ‘Old Man’ from UVic, paving the course for Vikings to follow!  And of course, there is this guy below.......

Horton has been a delightful surprise, scoring five tries since Christmas (plus one, he “shared” with Chad last week), seemingly equally at home at #15 or on the left flank. He has pace to burn, sure hands, relishes the contact and reads the situation well, making CW’s “back three”, a very threatening counter attack unit. We write of the CW boys but the “grads” are a very talented group, having played for The Tide; B.C. and Canada Age Grade, having won Age Grade titles at U16, 17 & 18, Provincial titles and National Championships.

The Norsemen, defending Ceili Cup holders bring a league second placing to Windsor, scoring a mammoth, average of 42 points per game (over eleven games) and despite having players “playing up” will be a lively handful. CW’s Ones gave a good account of themselves against the third place Caps last outing, so for sure, we can expect a contest. The Vikes sit on 24 points and The Tricolors, 28. A loss for either team could pretty much wave their playoff chances goodbye. Both teams will be missing players in Hong Kong but UVic can be guaranteed to play the wide game, testing the pace of CW, a pace which held up pretty well last weekend and something the pianists will be keen to show the students. We look forward to another good one at The Park.