Budapest Exiles go top of the league after a festival of tries against DEAC Rugby Club – PHOTOS

A fantastic second-half performance from the Budapest Exiles produced an impressive 69:5 victory over DEAC RFC means that the Expat team takes the lead in the Hungarian NB1. The Exiles were clear favourites to win this game, since their opponents, mainly consisting students from Debrecen University are a newly promoted side, and have still yet to win a game in the NB1. Nevertheless the Pink and Blacks were aware that their opponents can make life difficult for them.

There were reasons for concerns, especially that during the first 3 minutes of the game the DEAC players managed to break into the Exiles 22 line. Fortunately the early try attempt by Debrecen’s players was prevented, and captain of the Exiles Joris Auger managed to score points on the opposite side of the field.

By the 20 minute mark the host team was up 17:0 after a double from Frenchman Lucas Deyts.

The one conversion was made by former Sales Sharks and Newcastle Falcons academy player Neil Best, who was making his debut in the first team. The score-line relaxed the Exiles to the manner that they suddenly were put on a back-foot and got sucked in to DEAC’s game, which consisted of many individual runs from players and hospital passes and offloads. This ended up with the visiting side getting an unconverted try scored by their fly-half Obai Mafhouz.

When half-time arrived the Exiles reshuffled the forward pack and bringing on a Hungarian trio of Zsolt Szendrey-Kiss, Alex Hernadi and Matyas Szalai. The fresh pair of legs allowed the hosts to start making up for a sloppy first half, with Deyts completing his hattrick of tries in the first minute of the second-half. This gave the Exiles a guaranteed point for more than four tries scored. After that the points  kept coming in, with Hungarian international Peter Koltai scoring his first points of the season, and Auger scoring his second try of the game. 

Photo: Budapest Exiles

Photo: Budapest Exiles

The coaches replaced the two props, and also had to take Koltai off due to an injury.
The Hungarian international was replaced by Aron Erdelyi, who made his first start for the hosts this season. The full “Bomb squad”, that was inspired by South Africa’s world cup tactics of using 6 forward substitutes, was on the pitch.

Debrecen fought hard, but they couldn’t respond to the Exiles organised game.

The “Bomb squad” was in full swing, with flanker Hernadi and second row Szalai getting in a try each. The Exiles were already up by 50 points, when one of the DEAC players was sent-off for dangerous play, tackling Frenchman Francois Lafuente in mid-air.   

Debrecen fought with great spirit to at least get more tries against the Budapest side. Unfortunately for them with only 14 men on the field they were vulnerable to more attacks from the host side, who put three more tries against them coming from Hernádi, Best and scrum-half Bálint Kósa.

Before the game the Exiles hosted a rookie day for anyone wanting to get a taste of rugby, but the team is always open to new faces, no matter if experienced or not.

Apart from that the host’s partner team –  Nagykovácsi Dragons – held a training session for their junior teams.

The Exiles play their next game in two weeks time against Fit World Gorillak Szeged. Despite this being scheduled as an away fixture, the game will be played at Kincsem Park, due to renovation works on the host team’s pitch. The Exiles currently sit first in the table, due to their opponents having to have their games postponed due to a COVID-19 infection in the Esztergom teams. This meant that two matches have to be played once all players are tested and confirm that there are no more infections.

Photo: Budapest Exiles

Photo: Budapest Exiles

Post match comments:

Richard Roberts (Budapest Exiles, hooker)

Today we started slowly and we were forced into action from the first scrum where the Debrecen pack came through us and nearly pushed us off our own ball. However some slight adjustments in the front row enabled us to really start to dominate in the scrum. Dani (Stevens) and Marco (Fekete) were both brilliant and we really felt the push coming from both the second rows too. I feel we could have done a little more around the rucks, I wanted the pack to pick and go a bit more and draw in the defenders that would then allow our backs to play in more space. We definitely need to find a better balance between dictating the tempo and playing it wide. The pack again did perform well and with the strength of the bench when the changes were made the team was really able to turn the screw and convert many more chances as the opposition tired. We were deserving of the score and it probably should have been more. The pack is improving game by game and I think if we can give the backs the platform to play off the front foot the team will be force to reckon with for anyone in the league.

Bálint Kósa (Budapest Exiles, scrum-half)

The game started of exactly as we expected, and exactly like we wanted to avoid. It was pretty chaotic from our side, and we left many spaces uncovered. I must say that Debrecen have really improved over the past games they have played, and they didn’t make it easy for us. The result at half-time (17-5) perfectly reflects how difficult it was to play against them. But in the second half we found ourselves, and we started to play according to our game plan which was to not get dragged in by a running game by Debrecen and be more organised on the park. This paid off and we managed to win the second half 52-0. Now we have two weeks until a big game against Szeged so with four trainings we have to analyse the many mistakes we made during this game and correct them. The key points are to improve our defence line and play the game plan for 80min and not 40-60.

Photo: Budapest Exiles

Photo: Budapest Exiles

Source: Budapest Exiles