Utah Warriors Lose Season Kick-off on the Road in Atlanta

Marietta, GA — The Utah Warriors opened their 2020 regular season at Lupo Field against one of Major League Rugby’s expansion teams, Rugby ATL with a loss by the score of 28-19

Warriors’ head coach Chris Latham was able to see his team stretch their legs in the first match of the 2020 season with a number of players earning their first caps in a Warriors’ jersey.

The opening minutes of the match seemed nerve free as the Warriors’ looked solid on both sides of the ball. Forcing ATL into early penalties and costly decisions on offense. A good sign to start any season is that the Warriors’ scrums and lineouts were solid throughout the match with a 100% strike rate in the first half while also turning over Rugby ATL in the scrum in key moments.

Warriors’ fly-half Hagen Schulte went a perfect 3/3 in penalty kicks to put 9 points on the board and would remain perfect through the rest of the match going 4/4 to finish the day. The first try of the season for the Warriors was scored by Blake Hohaia in the 23 minute with a quick recycle from Dwayne Polataivao with Hohaia slashing underneath and scoring near the posts.

ATL’s first try in team history was scored by Conor Keys in the 31 minute. ATL left points off of the board as they struggled to find the posts during the majority of the match.

Commanding field position and smart play in defense left the Warriors leading at halftime by the score of 16-8.

Moments into the second half would be a turning point for the match. With the Warriors keeping momentum on their side for the first half, the momentum would shift in ATL’s favor as Saia ‘Uhila would be sent off to the sin bin with a yellow card at the 54th minute mark forcingUtah to play  a man for the next 10 minutes.

ATL would capitalize on this and score an unanswered 17 points before ending the match on a penalty kick for a final score of 19-28 in favor of the MLR debutants.

“I thought we showed very good signs throughout the game,” said Warriors’ head coach Chris Latham, “We showed we can be a team that can really build pressure. We created a lot of opportunities and because of that, were able to control the game. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to hold that for the full 80 minutes so we need to go through the game, look at reasons why that fell apart and then move forward. But ultimately as individuals, we need to look at ourselves and make sure that we can fix those problems very quickly.”

Warriors Team Captain, Polataivao shared his post-match thoughts and echoed his head coach.

“Gutted with the loss,” he said, “I am proud of the boys’ efforts today. We had that game and we were our own worst enemies in the end. Credit to Atlanta, they took their chances in the 2nd half and came away with the result. Thank you to our supporters who watched online and came out to Atlanta. Apologies for the result, but we will come back stronger next week.”

The Warriors will next face another Eastern Conference expansion team in the New England Freejacks who overwhelmed Rugby United New York in their season opener today by the score of 34-14. The Freejacks fixture is part of Major League Rugby’s Las Vegas Showcase Weekend with the match being played at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, NV.

For information and other details on the Warriors and the 2020 schedule please visit www.WarriorsRugby.com. For single game tickets to the Warriors 2020 home opener are for sale at www.WarriorsRugby.com/tickets/.

Next Up:
Utah Warriors vs New England Free Jacks
Saturday, February 15th, 11:30 AM PST
Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas Nevada

Where To Watch:
Local: KMYU
Stream: KSL.com and DESERET.com
Int’l: MLR Facebook Live