After a grueling seven-months of rugby league, 1280-minutes of football, Jounieh’s and AUB’s seasons have come down to just 80 more, this Saturday evening in Bhamdoun. Lebanese rugby league’s first ever semi-final promises to be a searing match, with the defending champion Al-Galacticos taking on arguably the form team, the Wolves.

The teams split their four regular season matches, although not evenly considering AUB’s 47-4 dismantling of Jounieh in mid-April, the last time the two met. That match came in the middle of an extant four-match winning run, a run that began with the advent of Faysal Jaber as coach following the departure of rookie tactician Mikhael Shammas.

Jaber, yet to taste defeat, has his team purring. With the league’s best defence and attack the Wolves will go into the match as marginal favorites. Since he took over AUB has conceded at a miserly 5-points-per game average, while ratcheting up 153 points themselves. Halves Darren Kinnaird and Anthony Ghossein have formed a fruitful partnership since the injury-enforced absence of Irishman Daniel Egan and Jaber will be reluctant to break up that pivotal pairing. Injury doubts hang over star fullback Wael Harb, who should play despite dislocating his shoulder in training last week.

Jounieh welcomed back influential lock Youssef Helou two weeks ago, but are still without a trio of injured frontline props in Amer Hachem, Elie Khoury and Nicolas Chammas. Coach Jean Paul Zakhour welcomes back boom second row Ahmad Masri from a nagging ankle injury, with the barnstorming forward’s brother Rabieh, the former AUST and CL forward, back in Lebanon and straight into the starting line up to add some muscle and athleticism up front.

Al-Galacitcos’ own premier halfback pairing of Danny Chemaly and 17-year-old Mohamed Mourtada has only been able to link up once – the result a ruthless 72-0 dismantling of USJ.

The key to the game should be how each defence can contain their opponents’ play-makers, with both forward packs and three-quarters evenly matched.