USJ Saints felt the full force of Jounieh’s backlash on Saturday evening, falling to one of the biggest losses in league history and closing in on a massive five hundred points conceded this season. Last week Jounieh succumbed to a club record 47-4 loss to AUB and it was USJ’s misfortune that they stood in the path of a side that is starting to get some of its wounded troops back. It has been a rollercoaster April for the league’s newcomers. Having entered the month on the back of a ten-match losing streak they opened up with a miracle last second win against then table-topping LAU. They then led Balamand late on before characteristically conceding three late tries and then closed the month on the end of, if not the mother of all Lebanese rugby league hidings, certainly its cruel, wicked aunt.

Saturday’s massacre was the third biggest defeat in league history, trailing LAU’s 82-0 slaughter of Club Libanais in Winter 2006, and the pitiless Immortals’ 76-0 humiliation of NDU in Spring 2004. If team records didn’t fall on Saturday, individual ones did. Jounieh scrum half Mohamed Mourtada, playing in only his second game, smashed the league’s single-game individual points record with his four tries and eight goals. The 32-point haul eclipsed Sami Halabi’s previous best 28-points, in Spring 2004. Three players, LAU’s Rudy Hachache and Hameed Wazni, and NDU’s Pierre Nasr, now captain of Jounieh, have scored 26-points in a match.

Mourtada, denied two tries by questionable decisions from the match officials three weeks ago against Balamand, was not about to be denied again. Deployed at his favorite halfback slot the former St George junior had a field day. It was the first time this season Al-Galacticos were able to field their best halfback combination of Mourtada and Danny Chemaly, a good sign for player-coach Jean Paul Zakhour. Showing off his devastating side-step Mourtada cut through USJ’s outclassed defence in the 4^th and 8^th minutes to get the ball rolling, with centre Ghassan Dandash’s try in the 11^th minute all but ending the match as a contest. Although USJ, missing five first choice players, held out for almost 20 minutes midway through the first period, they barely threatened Al-Galacticos’ line. Trailing 34-0 at the break they lost prop Tony Zreik then centre Hanna Hajjar and second row Khalil Azzar to injury, and were incapable of stemming the black-and-gold tide that swept relentlessly over them.

The bad news is that next week they must do it all over again, although they should need no motivation to cleanse Saturday’s capitulation from their collective conscience. Jounieh will be the first side to complete its regular season schedule and then will have a week off to size up either its semi-final opponent or celebrate a direct route to the May 24^th final. But for that to happen USJ, who play table-topping AUB Wolves in the last match of the regular season, will need to engineer a massive turnaround in form. On Saturday’s evidence, to say that would be improbable is an understatement.