Perhaps someone should have reminded LAU and AUB that the season for giving was over, with both teams in a decidedly charitable mood on Saturday lunchtime. LAU overturned a massive 24-point deficit to register the most unlikely of victories in Lebanon’s highest scoring match ever. The 90-point, 18-try score-a-thon beat the 82-points LAU had wracked up against Club Libanais two seasons ago and leaves AUB three points adrift of a play-off berth.

Rudy Hachache’s 38^th minute try was arguably the most important of the match – but with LAU trailing 28-4 that hardly seemed so at the time. The big utility, returning from a groin injury with a consummate match-winning performance, kept the Immortals’ corpse twitching after a brutal 30-minute AUB onslaught which had left the Immortals a bloody, bewildered mess. AUB’s lethal fullback, Wael Harb, opened the scoring with a 40-metre try in the 3^rd minute, and when Karim Mourabet went over from roughly the same distance, untouched from the scrum-base, alarm bells were ringing in LAU’s defence. Four more tries went in, in the 16^th, 22^nd, 29^th and 33^rd minutes, with Hachache’s 24^th minute effort all that a capitulating LAU could muster in response. 

But in the proverbial game of two halves, AUB somehow managed to allow LAU back into the match. The men in green scored almost at a point-a-minute in the second half, eventually drawing level at 32-all courtesy of a penalty try in the 63^rd minute, with Hachache – who else? - stripped in a two-man tackle in the act of scoring. Three minutes later the irrepressible Hachache scored his third to give LAU the lead for the first time – a lead they would hold onto despite a late 10-point flurry from Harb in a final ten minutes that resembled a basketball match, with 26-points scored. Hachache scored his fourth and final try in the 70^th minute, followed three minutes later by Bassel Nasrallah. Harb then kept the Wolves within reach before Jad Hachem scored the clincher with two minutes left. Harb’s desperate chip-and-chase netted him his hat-trick on the hooter to end a breathless game.