Rugby: Bern stun Swiss champs in league shocker

The arrival of Bern coach, Eugene Edmondson, has certainly changed the fortunes of Bern, a young team that were rightly considered the whipping boys of the Swiss A League last season.

Since Edmondson took over the helm in the summer, they’ve now recorded two wins, and more importantly Saturday’s stunned current Swiss champions, Geneva PLO – the result: 13-10.

Edmondson told Swisster: “We finally put it together for 80 minutes. Before we always played in sections of ten minutes. We had 22 players out for once and that allowed us to fill any gaps with someone good.”

Bern number 10, Gavin Moloney scored the crucial try around "20 minutes into the first half after some good work from the forwards”, cancelling out a Geneva effort early on.

But in the dying minutes the game hinged on an ambitious Geneva decision to go for a try instead of evening up the scoreline with a penalty kick – the wrong decision as it turned out, as a spirited Bern defence rallied to keep the Swiss champions at bay.   

“They weren’t all that cheerful at the end,” Edmondson said of the visitors, one of whom was a disgruntled Geneva coach Olivier Achaintre.

“We played a bad match, didn’t prepare and didn’t really take them seriously. We were leading 10-nil and thought that it would be easy. Then the atmospheric conditions changed, there was a storm and they came back,” he told Swisster.  

“There were three disallowed tries from us in the final 20 minutes,” he added. “However, I’m angry with the team and with myself because we should have prepared better.”

Zurich in the meantime were busy reviving their so-far calamitous season with a well-timed away-from-home 43-10 victory over – it must be said – a vastly depleted Yverdon.

Grasshoppers skipper Jesse Nicholas told Swisster that the win represented a sigh of relief or “something like that”.

“They played as we expected, but we defused their rolling maul, won some ball and the backs got a chance to show what they’re worth.

Three tries arrived from full-back, Fraser Callaghan while inside centre, Yanick Staubli chipped in with two. “We're headed in the right direction at least, but we’ve given some of the other teams a real head start," said Nicholas.  

League leaders Stade Lausanne played at home against Nyon on Saturday and the visitors failed to notch a single point. The 26-0 win means that Lausanne remain unbeaten so far this season while Nyon find themselves in the wooden spoon position.

Lausanne coach Andy Whitlow called the match “a good result, we didn’t get the bonus point [awarded for four tries or more], but that was because Nyon were very committed in defence.”

Flanker Cyril Cafireo scored the first try, which Gestapoed an initial Nyon resistance movement. After that the forward battle was one-way traffic.

“We were killing them in the scrums, because they have some very small props, so basically we were winning ball every time we went down,” said Whitlow.

Lausanne are still 10 points clear of Hermance, but the latter – with a game in hand – are quietly going about their business after a few hiccoughs in the summer.

Nonetheless, Hermance technical director, Carter Croft had some harsh words for his players despite a 28-10 result in CERN on Saturday.

“Even though we won, it was a long way from a satisfactory performance. We went into an early lead, then they came back and we were poor – defence, set pieces, lineouts were all over the place,” he said.

At half-time, the score line stood at 10-6 to the home team after tries from winger Rodrigo Sanchez Panizza and full-back Mourad Boukhari. Panizza however, failed to punish the visitors from several penalty opportunities.  

For CERN team manager, Beren Evans, the match was thrown away. “I felt that we really had the game sown up in the first half but our kicker missed five kicks,” he told Swisster.  

Croft meantime was regrouping. “I gave them a bit of a bollocking at half-time and once we got back to basics we were off and away,” he added.

“CERN are not a great team but they’re motivated and very physical and I’m glad to have gotten away with it,” said Croft.

Hermance tries came from a penalty try, number eight Ali Nouri and hooker Dennis Téchené.