HARC's Matt Echezabal (Jeffrey Burns photo)
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Eight teams will start the weekend but only four will advance.
The Kansas City Blues (West-North #4) travel to Shreveport (West-Texas #1), the Denver Highlanders (West- North #3) gol to Texas to take on HARC (West-Texas #2), the Austin Blacks (West-Texas #3) are on the road at Glendale (West-North #2), while the Austin Huns (West-Texas #4) will be in Aspen (West- North #1).
The Northern sub-region of the West Rugby Union is comprised of the Eastern Rockies Union, Great Plains, and Heart of America. It is helpful to think of it as the teams from Colorado plus the KC Blues.
It is interesting to note that Aspen and KC are both former Super League clubs. The Denver area supports three clubs - Denver Barbarians in the Super League, and the Denver Highlanders and Glendale Raptors in Division I.
The Texas sub-region of the West is the Texas Rugby Union. For rugby purposes, Shreveport is part of Texas and in point of fact draws some of its players from East Texas which does not have a men's side.
The Dallas Harlequins participate in the TRU Division I season but are ineligible for the playoffs because their Super League players take part. The Quins beat the Huns (57-15, 45-12), they also beat Austin Blacks soundly on both their meetings (60-14, 54-0).
The Quins ran up impressive scores against HARC (62-28, 52-24), although Shreveport beat the Quins in Dallas (20-7) at the start of the spring, but the Quins returned the favor in Shreveport (30-19). The one Shreveport game aside, it appears the Quins are not sternly tested in this league and this may explain their Super League results. It will take an otherworldly intelligence to explain how they beat NYAC.
The bulk of the relevant league play in the North took place in October and in April. The Blues beat Glendale in their only meeting of the year 17-15. Shortly thereafter, the Highlanders beat the Blues six tries to four and Aspen beat Glendale 24-21.
To further confuse the relationship between seedings and head to head results, Glendale beat the Highlanders narrowly 8-7. The scores from April are a better indicator of current form. The Highlanders beat Glendale 16-12, while Aspen beat the Highlanders twice 31-15 and on April 19th 56-5. The day before, Glendale beat Aspen 22-10.
These scorelines seem to suggest there is not much between the seeds. The Blacks are typically the strongest team in Texas (behind the Quins). They beat Shreveport 34-27 in Austin, then Shreveport returned the favor at home to the tune of 30-24.
HARC surprised Austin 36-17 at home before Christmas, then beat them again 19-10 on April 19th. This was the first time HARC has swept Austin (HARC was created as a merger of the Houston Old Boys and Houston Rugby Club in 1998).
HARC lost narrowly to Shreveport at the end of the fall (16-19) before winning an even closer one (13-12) at home in the spring. It should be noted that Shreveport's Kevin Wiggins knocked on a pair of scoring opportunities.
Austin Blacks beat the Huns narrowly (22-20) in their first meeting before beating them 34-20 later in the season. Shreveport beat the Huns 22-8 at home and 45-19 in their visit to Austin at the end of the season and HARC beat the Huns (28-12, 22-15).
How do the two sub-regions compare head to head? Last year at the Western playoffs, Austin lost to Glendale in a seeding match. In addition, this year Glendale traveled to Austin in mid-March and beat the Blacks 59-11.
The Austin Huns did not make it to Westerns last year. In 2008, HARC beat Boulder the first day before losing to Aspen on day two. Boulder is out of the playoff picture this year. Shreveport went to the Westerns but was competing as a DII club.
The numbers (and their previous matchup this year) suggest that the Blacks should fall to Glendale.
Aspen should have no problems with the Austin Huns, on paper at least, but the results of the remaining two matches are anyone's guess.
However, due to the North being the stronger sub-region, one might pick Kansas City as slight favorites over Shreveport and the Highlanders over HARC.
