Match Report

Balamand marked their impressive 2009 rebuild with an easy win against a second-string AUB side that saw them finish the regular rounds in second place. The routine 42-10 victory, which was anything but the preview to this weekend’s semi-final following AUB coach Faysal Jaber’s decision to rest 14 first-teamers, helped the northerners erase the bad memories of their dead last place finish last season, when they could only manage three wins, and their second-from-bottom placing in the inaugural Bank of Beirut Rugby League Championship in 2007-8.

This season sees Lebanese rugby league’s three founder members commanding the play-off positions for the first time. AUB has not qualified for a final since the Winter 2006 season, when they were crushed by LAU, while Balamand last competed for honours in Spring 2006, when their elite Allen Soultan-led squad easily disposed of the dynastic Immortals. Only three players remain from that crack 2006 Razorbacks outfit, one of whom made his long awaited return to the field after a lengthy injury-enforced absence. Former international front row Amin Maassarani, who played in Lebanon’s world cup qualifiers in 2006, laced up his dusty, cobweb-strewn boots to play a cameo role in his first game since damaging a knee for Liban Espoir in 2007. While he won’t have recognised many of the faces in the familiar blue strip, the Balamand atmosphere will have cast his mind back, with the healthy crowd, drums beating them along in their chants, reminiscent of the days when the mountain-top stadium was a virtual fortress to outsiders.

The young Razorbacks, despite winning all three home matches this season, will know they cannot rely on history or a partisan home crowd to carry them past AUB, but they will be hopeful that their slick backline can perform as well as it did on Friday. Teenage flanker Ahmed Shawk netted a hat-trick of tries and will hope that fellow Australians, the Jerjess twins, are free from military duty to feed him more good ball.

Sin bin: Evan Lorednow (AUB)