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Express Varsity team at OMFL Championship

August 10, 2016   ·   0 Comments

TNT Express Varsity receiver Steven Noble catches a pass during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s (Aug. 7) OMFL championship game at Centennial Stadium in Etobicoke. The Express battled hard in the afternoon game but suffered a 14-0 loss to the Cambridge Lions.

Photo by Brian Lockhart

By Brian Lockhart
The TNT Express Varsity team travelled to Centennial Stadium in Etobicoke on Sunday (Aug. 7) to take on the Cambridge Lions in the OMFL Varsity championship.
It has been a strange season for sure, with a lot of low scoring games in the Varsity division.
The Express scored only 22 points for the entire season while giving up 44 goals against.
Three of those games were shutouts including a 1-0 win over Orangeville on July 10.
Sunday’s championship went scoreless for most of the first half.
Held at mid-field by the Express defence, the TNT line held tough with good hits by Denver Ross, Colin Kreuzwiensner, Broderick Black, Justin DeFaria, Riley Wilson, and Neil Hall.
But with less than three minutes remaining in the half, the Lions ran wide to score and followed up with a one-point convert to lead the game 7-0.
Early in the second half the Lions were forced to punt after the Express defence kept them pinned in their own end.
Lining up for a big charge, TNT’s Justin DeFaria had a hug run for a first down, but the Express couldn’t advance and were forced to kick.
Cambridge opened the lead on a long successful pass and a TD to make it a 14-0 game.
The Express turned up the effort mid-way in the third quarter with a series of successful gains that were lead by offensive linemen, James Gilmour, Daniel Bonsi, Jared Prieto, and Justin DeFaria punching holes in the Cambridge line.
The Express managed a good field position when they recovered the ball on a botched punt, but on the next play an interception on a pass attempt turned the game around and the TNT squad was back on defence.
With nowhere to go in the fourth quarter, the Lions were again forced to kick.
The ball was returned by Matthew Wadge for a big gain. That was followed by a nice pass from QB Brian Escott to receiver Steven Noble.
With time running out, the Lions took possession of the ball with 1:45 left on the clock to end the game.
The final was 14-0 and the Cambridge team claimed the 2016 Varsity championship.
“We gave it our all. We tried as a team,”  said TNT halfback Nicholas Hunter. “All season we had low scoring games. We try to win as a team and lose as a team – unfortunately today was a loss.”
With only three teams in the Varsity division this year, the teams got to know each other pretty well.
“It was a much different format this year. We got to know the different teams. Today, with Cambridge, we knew what was coming, they threw some new things at us and it didn’t work out in our favour. Defensively we played just as well as we have all year. We held them at mid-field. There were times when they could have scored but we took it away from them. We had turn overs through out the game. We came out here and showed them what we had.”
The Express Varsity went 2-4 for the regular season.

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