Rugby: Nyon back in business after beating Zurich

On Friday, Andy Whitlow, coach of league leaders Stade Lausanne, predicted a Nyon victory over Zurich in the weekend’s only A league game, after questioning the visitors’ ability to travel.

Nyon’s 37-18 win appeared to vindicate Whitlow’s case, but only in part.

Six tries to two read the count at the final whistle – an indication perhaps of a new hunger that pervaded the home team after last year’s uncharacteristic performance prompted club president, Alain Winterhalter to impose a series of punishing winter boot camps and individual cross-examinations.

“We are very happy with the result,” Winterhalter told Swisster. “The boys played their socks off as asked. We were down two tries to nothing after 15 minutes and they managed to turn the situation around.”

As observed, it was all Zurich from the kick-off with Felix von Reischach and Bertrand Blacheton getting a brace of tries. “First 20 minutes were good and we took a couple of intercept tries,” said Grasshoppers’ skipper Josh Bjornson.

“But then we fell apart in the last twenty minutes and it just got away from us.”

And got away it did, clean away like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption as Nyon’s Bruno Barthelemy (with two tries), Basile Mora, Olivier Dumerliat Bryan Seale and Romain Bonnefoy exploited a series of Zurich blunders.

“Not to take away anything from Nyon, but we made a lot of mistakes and gave them a lot of opportunities. We were woeful in defence,” said Bjornson.

When Swisster put Whitlow’s travel theory to him he said: “We’ve been looking at that since we read it and our results away do seem to reflect it.”

“Without making any excuses though we do travel a lot, more than any other club,” he said.

“For Geneva teams most away games are half-an-hour away,” he pointed out.

For Winterhalter Zurich “didn’t have too many problems coming down and came well ahead of the match and had time to prepare”.

“They looked like a very solid team but just made mistakes. To say that a three-hour trip would disturb your concentration is a little exaggerated,” he said.

Nonetheless, Winterhalter is acutely aware that Nyon remain in the woods despite their jump to sixth position in the table from last.

“It’s early days yet – we want to maintain this position and therefore make the play-offs; then we can say that we’re on the right track. I don’t want to judge everything on one match.”

Meanwhile Zurich’s players could be in for some boot camps of their own. “We have to work on our game patterns – the defensive lines didn’t organize properly and quickly enough,” said Bjornson. “There’s plenty to do.”