Match Report

If Operation Record Score was only a partial success, Operation Points Difference was total as AUB, who jumped from fifth to third in the increasingly tight battle for the semi-finals, registered a 78-0 rout of AUST.

The red-and-whites smashed AUB's previous highest score and winning margin, both set in the 58-10 victory over Balamand in the 2007/8 Bank of Beirut Rugby League Championship; but they failed to top the highest ever score in league history, only managing fourth place behind 84-0, 82-0 and 80-0 monster LAU scores, and only third place this year with two of those scores coming in the opening rounds this season.

American fullback Sam Walsh also smashed individual AUB records, his 30-point haul surpassing Hussein Khatib’s 20-points set back in the
2003 Winter Championship, and his 11-goals topping Peter Danner’s
another American modest five goal mark. Walsh was ably supported by his compatriots, with Cole Murray, Taylor Pichette and Nyame Cooper contributing to an early 4th July parade with a further four tries between them.

For AUST this was a match too far. Without a core of suspended players they had to endure the loss of player-coach Rabie El Masri (illness) and without him all forms of resistance and discipline collapsed.
Fifteen penalties conceded and without the heart to tackle AUB?s rampant forwards, the ravaged Lions now must be longing for the end of what has proved to be an ultimately disastrous season.

Sin bin: Mahmoud El Sakka (AUST)