On a good day for rugby in the Province, the senior mens Blues hammered the defending Canadian Rugby Championship BC Bears 55-20 in front of 1000 plus in Burlington.

The Blues, clearly not good enough in an opening loss to Atlantic Rock, and excruciatingly close losers to Prairie Wolfpack, finally put it all together but running in 8 tries to set a league record for points in a match.

On a blustery fall afternoon, Burlington RFC hosted a series of matches that made for a entertaining “Rugby Day in Burlington”; first, University of Guelph Gryphons came out on top of Brock University Badgers in a pre-season University match; then, the Blues 7s side made their debut by coming from behind to down Niagara Thunder 7s by 28-15 in a wide open affair.

Blues and Bears, who played for the title last year in Victoria (BC winning 12-8) then took the field and any doubts about the intensity of the rivalry were quickly erased when Blues’ Brett Beukeboom was binned after only 50 seconds of play.

Playing with the wind and the man advantage, BC could not take advantage as the teams traded penalties during Beukebooms’ ban. BC did score first through flanker Mackinnon to go up 10-3, but Ontario drove back in and levelled when Mark Macsween went over after a five meter scrum. The teams traded scores and were at 13-13 at the 33 minute mark when Bears lock Brian Erichsen was sent off for punching Blues prop Dan Pletch.

Despite this, the Bears Eric Wilson gave the visitors a 20-13 lead in injury time, but Ontario came back and manufactured a lovely try for center Ryan Tomlinson to go to the locker room at 20-20.

With the Bears a man short and now facing the howling wind, Ontario went immediately for the jugular and ran in 35 points in 28 minutes to win comfortably. Macsween got his second, center Derek Daypuck finished an end to end move, lock Stu Ault found pay dirt and teenage sensation Tay Paris debuted in the CRC with two tries in 6 minutes, flyhalf Ander Monro converting all five scores, to leave BC on the short end of a 55-20 thrashing. The Blues thus finish third in the competition with 6 points, BC ending fourth with zero.

“Ontario doesn’t need any extra motivation to play BC” said Blues captain Dan Pletch “we really wanted to finish strong and show the fans that we can play; we executed really well and it was a great game to play in.”

The Blues, along with the other CRC sides, will now await Rugby Canada’s announcement of the Canada Selects side to travel to Argentina in October with several players putting their hand up in the BC game.  The squad is expected to be named early in the week.