“Strela — Ak Bars” won the Russian Cup for the second time.

      Kazan rugby players narrowly beat Lokomotiv from Penza

      The Russian Rugby Cup final concluded in Moscow. Photo: provided by RC "Strela-Ak Bars"

      Kazan rugby team Strela — Ak Bars became Russian Cup holders for the second time in their history. In Moscow the Kazan side outplayed Penza’s Lokomotiv by the minimal rugby score of 13:7. More about this extremely exciting and dramatic match — in a piece by Realnoe Vremya.

      Strela faced Lokomotiv’s flank project

      The final showdown between Strela-Ak Bars and Penza’s Lokomotiv began with a ceremonial kick-off. It turned out that former Lokomotiv footballer Dmitry Sychev had a “light hand,” because the team he represented at the pre-start ceremony won the first half 7:3. The lucky man for the Penza club in the opening half was South African Rudi van Rooyen. After his compatriot Ebner van Rijen kicked the ball into touch, the railwaymen ran a lineout and van Rooyen grounded the ball for a try, which Sergey Yanyushkin converted — 7:0.

      Why did footballer Sychev from Moscow’s Lokomotiv and rugby players from Penza become clubmates? The thing is that in Soviet times the Lokomotiv society operated quite autonomously, and each regional railway branch could financially support sports teams as it wished. For example, in football the flagship of the Lokomotiv sports society was Almaty’s Kairat, and in hockey there was no flagship team after 1982, when Moscow’s Lokomotiv ceased to exist.

      As a result, even Kazan was able to take advantage of the lack of a sporting vertical within Lokomotiv: in the late ’90s the Kazan railway branch sponsored the basketball club UNICS, and the team competed under the name UNICS-Lokomotiv.

      Herman Davydov pressures an opponent. Photo: provided by RC "Strela-Ak Bars"

      The first half went to the railwaymen

      Eventually the Ministry of Railways formed a pool of sporting flagships, and in 2018 a rugby team was founded in Penza, where Lokomotiv was created on the site of the disbanded Imperiya and immediately entered the ranks of Russia’s strongest teams.

      This season Lokomotiv has not looked very confident in the national championship, risking missing the semifinal spots, so in Penza they could have made a decisive bet on the Cup final and, prospectively, on the Russian Rugby-7 championship. But all those calculations mattered to the Kazan side only before the game, as food for thought.

      The first half belonged to the railwaymen, who won it 7:3. Two rounds earlier the Penza team had won a championship match in Kazan 21:19, building a decisive advantage with a better first-half performance of 10:0. Even now the Penza side were better, only lamenting that Franco Nodie failed to ground a try. The moment was curious because Nodie entered Kazan’s in-goal area with the ball but could not place it on the turf, which is the necessary act to score points. Otherwise, one could complain that Jeremy Jordaan suffered a muscle injury, after which it seemed he would be substituted, but adrenaline did its work and the Penza South African remained on the field.

      A collapse of a scrum. Photo: provided by RC "Strela-Ak Bars"

      The Kazan side had their own memories of the first half, mostly negative. First, they put some unjustified emphasis on kicking passes forward, losing the ball four times as a result. If the first such kick in the first half was justifiable — they were very close in attack to catching the ball and grounding it in the in-goal area — then each subsequent attempt provoked increasing bewilderment. There were four in total. Kazan’s head coach J.P. Neil at first regretted, then despaired, then puzzled, and finally raged, raining “thunder and lightning” down on his erring charges from the top of the Dinamo stadium, because he had been suspended and could not coach the team directly from the bench. Alfred Khisamov and Gary Botha sat nearby and mourned; the head coach’s emotions were transmitted via radio to the Russian-speaking members of the coaching staff.

      The second obvious problem was missed tries and penalty kicks. After Kobus Marais struck the rugby posts in the first half — something that is extremely rare in rugby, although Marais seems to do it regularly in Cup finals — the ball refused to fly toward the target that would guarantee points on two further occasions. Neither Marais, who missed another penalty and a try, nor Deon Carstens, who tried to replace him, were successful. Kazan could have picked up eight points in potential but instead got a nerve-wracking finale.

      Penza’s Franco Nodie, having failed to score, was showing with his fingers how much he had missed. That distance was the size of a gudgeon, and it could characterize the first-half score itself. Most strikingly, the number of points scored in the second half was equally minimal. Kazan’s defense was rock-solid; Penza’s was breached twice, but each time it looked as if they were dragging a hippopotamus out of a swamp. The radiant and smiling KVN performer Aidar Garaev, who during the ceremonial kick represented a Kazan supporter, could have written and performed another song in the style of the famous rock opera — God Knows. Unjustified kicks, unconverted penalties and tries, balls not caught when a treacherous projectile went into touch, twice bouncing out of Johan Tromp’s hands. Penza had their own problems: for some reason they decided not to take the safe option of kicking for goal from penalties, which they usually do excellently, and instead tried to run them. But that decision seemed to be the only wrong call by our opponents, and at 7:3 it still allowed them to control the match. J.P. Neil and assistant coach Gary Botha decided to change the game with substitutions.

      Both teams' kickers ended up on the deck. Photo: provided by RC "Strela-Ak Bars"

      Herman Davydov’s blind pass

      One of the substitutions proved productive. Rikert Korff scored a try, but before that two Penza players were sent off. The first-half unlucky Franco Nodie and Vasily Polivalov, who within a couple of minutes left their team to play 15 against 13. The point is that this try, though unconverted, put Kazan ahead 8:7 in the moment, but any scoring action by the opponents threatened to turn the game. Any penalty could become decisive.

      Kazan increased concentration, tightened up defensively, and with five minutes left in regular time Andrey Karzanov scored a try out wide after a pass from Herman Davydov — 13:7. But yet another missed conversion left that score slippery. Any converted try by the Penza side would have been decisive. Lokomotiv’s sent-off players returned, and with equal numbers they furiously assaulted Strela-Ak Bars’ in-goal. It was clear that Penza would no longer be helped by penalties, so Kazan could commit fouls almost with impunity. It was dangerous for Penza to try to score a try from the touchline: there was a risk of failing the conversion, and then the victory would remain with the Kazan shooters. Therefore Lokomotiv, with indefatigable persistence, tried to break a hole through the center of the defense.

      Kazan’s missed attempts, Strela’s mistakes, Ak Bars’ wrongly taken decisions — all this already sat on Penza’s side of the scales, but to win they still needed their own successful act: a converted try. Yet Kazan had played two not-so-great championship matches before this final, losing to Penza at home and narrowly beating the Moscow Region outsider VVA-Podmoskovye.

      We had our own plans for this Cup, to which we could add medals from the national championships in Rugby-7 and the classic game. And the moment the ball was briefly loose, Vitaly Zhivatov pounced on it, passed to Herman Davydov, who kicked it into touch. By rugby rules it was a “dead ball,” and by the unwritten rules of Cup finals — the decisive, match-winning action.

      By the way, Davydov began the final having almost dislocated his jaw in a collision with an opponent. He appeared in the protocol with a try-scoring pass to Karzanov, and in the supporters’ memory — with a brilliant back pass when, through his legs and without looking, he sent the ball to Tromp out wide and defused a dangerous moment.

      Djaudat Abdullin