Paphos Tigers hammer Nicosia Barbarians
16th February 2008
by Ron James

Paphos Tigers 87   Ayios Nikolaos Stags 3

The visiting Barbarians team was no match for an efficient and tough Tigers side who played some great rugby to entertain a fair sized crowd at Paphos on Saturday.

The Tigers dominated the scrums and rucks with Deano, Tony Thoma and Chris Thoma all proving too much of a handful for the Barbarians pack. Lee Thomson is improving all the time as a lineout jumper and was providing ample ball enabling the Tigers backs to run some of their growing repertoire of set moves.

The backs had the usual excellent service from Captain Dimitri Maratheftis at scrum half and the game opened with a flowing back move for Marcus Holden to score near the posts.

Tries were then scored on a regular basis, some of them with some spectacular rugby. Marcus Holden had an almost perfect kicking record converting eleven of the thirteen tries.

A number of scoring opportunities were wasted in the second half with some of the Tigers side getting white line fever and over complicating moves instead of keeping it simple. However, the day was a personal triumph for Deano who, after year of trying, managed to get the opposition to buy one of his outrageous dummies and score under the posts.

To their credit Barbarians kept tackling throughout and managed one consolation penalty.