By Aaron Wilson
It wasn’t the kind of start that the defending Western Conference division champions had envisioned.
Instead of beginning the season with a victory, the Houston SaberCats absorbed a frustrating loss at home to the Chicago Hounds.
The SaberCats (0-1) took a narrow defeat, 25-22, after building a 17-12 halftime lead in front a raucous ‘Experience it Live’ crowd filled with energy and fanfare.
Largely because of penalties and spacing issues in the open field, the SaberCats never got on track and appeared decidedly out of sync one week after dominating the Hounds, 61-19, in a preseason rout.
This time, the SaberCats were off-kilter.
“We knew it was going to be tough,” Andre Warner said. “Preseason isn’t a true affection of what it’s going to be. We expected a big comeback from them. We weren’t on our game. The basics let us down. We have to win our set pieces. Our kicking game has to be better.
“It’s the first round. We have to learn from our mistakes. This one hurt. It’s not nice losing at home.”
Warner scored an early try in the first half to open the scoring for the SaberCats followed by a penalty kick from Davy Coetzer.
Although Sam Tuifua scored a late try in the 77th minute to close the gap to three points, a Coetzer conversion kick hit the left goal post and ricocheted back to the field. The Hounds ran out the clock to close out the win against a 14-2 squad that enters this season with high expectations.
“We’re a little bit rusty,” Ronan Murphy said. “We’re working on new combinations, trying to find the right mix to do well. Mostly, our mistakes led to their points. Just discipline, penalties took us out of the game. We’re trying to learn from this and make it a lesson, not a loss.”
Before the SaberCats take the field again next week on the road against Rugby LA, they have errors to correct.
“It’s all very fixable,” Warner said. “I think just all-around we need to improve on when to run it and when to kick it. We can have a better all-around performance. Individual errors let us down. Not good enough. We are disappointed, but we’ll be back.
“That’s the great thing about rugby. When you win or lose, you start the next week 0-0. We have to bounce back real quick and learn from our mistakes.”
The Hounds were led in scoring by Adriaan Carelse’s eight points on two penalty goals and one conversion kick.
It was Carelse’s conversion kick that gave the Hounds a 19-17 lead followed by a penalty kick.
Dominic Akina led the SaberCats with 90 meters, followed by 86 for Jeremy Misailegalu.
Warner was credited with 39 passes.
And Nathan Den Hoedt, a team captain along with Johan Momsen, had a team-high 10 tackles followed by nine apiece for Coetzer and Marno Redelinghuys.
“I think the loss is worse because it’s self-inflicted,” Drew Wild said. “I feel like we were the better team, but the better team didn’t win the game. We’ve got a really good group, a really good culture this year. Hopefully, this is just the start and we can only get better from here. We’ll see how we bounce back.”
