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Prime Time in Lincoln, Nebraska, wasn’t the first loss by a Boulder-based football club on Saturday.
While the Buffs lost east of home, west of home the Boulder Rugby Football Club fell victim to the resurgence of the Gentlemen of Aspen, playing their first game at Colorado’s highest level of rugby in more than a decade.
For a storied club with seven national titles, the 83-28 win over Boulder in the Gents’ return to the Rocky Mountain Rugby Division II Premiership marked a significant milestone — one that puts them on the track to add more trophies to its case. Roused by the words of Simon Dogbe and Freddie Waititi — the two men who were with the team for the last title in 2009 — in the pregame huddle, the Gents came out flying.
“It adds a little bit of spice,” Dogbe, who played in Saturday’s game, told the Aspen Daily News. “It adds a little bit of spice to training, a bit of spice in the gym; you’re working much harder knowing you’ve got to produce that much harder. It makes everything more fun. Beer tastes better.”
Like a good whiff of smelling salts, the spice showed early as Aspen stormed out to a 35-0 lead. The Gents, with a decided size advantage in their forwards, used their physicality to gum up the middle of the field and create more space around the outside.
Just minutes into the game, Dogbe led by example by pushing through two waves of Boulder would-be tacklers on the left side, pairing up with Darren Barth to give the Gents plenty of room on the right side for an eventual try by Inoke Takau to open the scoring.
Player-coach Ben Mitchell, who appeared to be the largest player at Wagner on the day, used his size and speed to open up more try opportunities within the first 15 minutes, one by Chris Campbell and one by Fred Rubidge.
“It’s a special occasion being back at this level for the first time in over 12 years,” Mitchell said. “I don’t think anybody would have stopped us in the first 20 (minutes). We were very up for it.”
After the initial adrenaline wore off following the seven-try rally in the first 20 minutes, Boulder threatened to make a game out of it, scoring two tries in five minutes just before halftime.
“That last little block where they started to get momentum, that mostly came from discipline, to be honest; us turning the ball over, giving away a lot of unnecessary penalties and they were able to get territory from that,” Gent Risteard Mulcahy said. “In fairness to them, they finished their tries at the end there. But we put them in that position, as opposed to them putting the pressure on us and that’s obviously something we can work on. If we control the ball, we can play the game on our own terms.”
Aspen’'s Fred Rubidge gets ready to offload the ball. Rubidge scored two tries against Boulder.
Rich Allen/Aspen Daily News
After the halftime breather, Aspen’s discipline seemed to be restored and they got the two tries back within just a few minutes, first by Campbell and then by Mitchell. Boulder got one back around the six-minute mark, but within three minutes of that Aspen had scored two more as they started working toward Wagner’s lower-elevation north end.
By the midway point of the second half, the Gents had established a 50-point lead and were in control, forcing turnovers in their offensive end with simple pressure. After the B-team started filtering in, Aspen scored two more tries but Boulder got the last score.
Campbell, Rubidge, Morgan Dryhurst-Jones and Will Hardenbergh each scored two tries for Aspen. Takau, Mitchell, Matt MacKenzie, Chris Armstrong and Matthew Dahl also crossed the line in the win.
Unsure exactly what to expect entering the Premiership for the first time in years, the Gents were happy with the result but certainly felt they have things to improve on before facing the league’s top teams; they set a goal to allow fewer than 20 points before the match.
“I felt like everything we were doing was working,” Dogbe said. “Two lapses in concentration when they scored points but they’re easy things to fix. It’s not something that I’m worried about long term.”
Aspen has been buoyed the past couple of seasons by higher player turnout over its summer seasons, with more than 50 players coming to training sessions this year. For the fall, many of those players have left the team to return to school or other rugby commitments, but a core group remains.
The crowd watches as Chris Campbell kicks a conversion for the Gentlemen of Aspen. Campbell hit 9 of 12 conversion attempts and scored two tries in the win.
Rich Allen/Aspen Daily News
A successful summer season last year allowed the Gents to reenter the more competitive RMR fall league and skip having to compete in Division III to do so. A few years ago, they attempted to compete in DIII but struggled with player numbers.
This summer, Aspen saw more success, but a loss against rival Vail snapped a winning streak that dated back to 2019. Their only other loss on the season came in the finals of the Cow Pie Classic, though the season was truncated with other teams struggling with numbers.
The expected favorites of the five-team Division II this fall are the Barbarians and Water Dogs, both out of Denver. The two teams started the season on Saturday with the Barbos squeaking out a 48-43 victory. The Barbarians won the 2023 DII national championship.
Haggis rugby out of Park City, Utah, is the fifth team in the league and had a first-week bye.
The top two seeds in the league play on Nov. 16 for the Premiership championship. The winner of that game advances to the DII regional playoffs and the loser goes to the DIII bracket.
Aspen plays host to the Water Dogs on Saturday before taking a break from RMR play for Ruggerfest the weekend after.
“It’s good to be challenging yourself against the best in the country,” Dogbe said. “I was part of the team that won nationals, then the after, everyone kind of retired so we couldn’t put a full team in anymore and we’ve just been a summer league team for the past 10-15 years, wanting to get back to the nationals and become one of the best in the country.
“We were just telling the players this is a first step. We’ve got the players now to do it. We’ve got the ability to do it. Now we’ve just got to do it.”