The last weekend of fall play for the Cardinals Collegiate Rugby Conference provided plenty of drama as four conference matches were played with seeding for the spring playoff on the line.

VMI and Radford met at Radford with both teams looking to improve to 3-1. Radford outlasted VMI, winning 40-27. The teams played a barn burner of open rugby as a combined 10 tries were scored. With the score at 30-27 in favor of Radford and less than 10 minutes remaining, Radford twice found space out wide for their wing to score the final two tries of the match and secure the win. On the day, Radford notched seven tries, almost all of which came from their back three, two conversions, and a penalty kick. The result left Radford with a 3-1 record and VMI at 2-2.

Undefeated Longwood University traveled to Harrisonburg, VA to take on 0-3 James Madison. JMU had a tough series of league games prior to this matchup, losing three by a total of 15 points. However, the day belonged to JMU as they ran in eight tries (four converted) beating Longwood 48-12. Zach Willmott and Dan Lauro had two tries for JMU with Donny Carroll, Erik Carlson, Jake Saintcross, and Gabe Harrison adding one each. Chris Kunkel made 4 conversions to round out the scoring. JMU improved to 1-3 and Longwood dropped to 3-1.

Old Dominion traveled up I-64 to take on winless VCU in Richmond. ODU scored early and often hammering VCU by a score of 93-7. ODU’s halfback pair led the way combining to score 40 points. Scrumhalf John Zummo scored three tries and three conversions, and flyhalf David Roddy added three tries and two conversions.

The final match of the weekend paired the University of Mary Washington (UMW) and William and Mary (W&M). Once again, the winner of the match would be 3-1 in league play. The match started with W&M’s Justin William slotting a penalty kick (3-0, W&M). UWM answered back as Nick Ryan scored an unconverted try (5-3, UMW). UMW struck again on a try by Ryan Miller that was converted by Christophe Perdu (12-3, UMW). However W&M refused to back down as Williams scored a second penalty kick and a try that he converted to give W&M a slim 13-12 lead at the half. In the second half, UMW hit their stride outscoring W&M 26-5. UMW got two more tries from Miller to get a hat trick, a second Ryan try, and one form Ben Britten. Perdu added 3 conversions. W&M lone second half try came from Brad Blount. The UMW gave them a 3-1 record and W&M was left at 2-2.

The results from the weekend left four teams tied at the top of the table with a record of 3-1: Radford, UMW, Longwood, and ODU. Thus, a series of tiebreakers had to be used to determine seeding for the spring play-off. After tie breakers were used the final seeds from the fall play were: Radford #1, UMW #2, Longwood #3, ODU #4, VMI #5, W&M #6, JMU #7, University of Richmond (U of R) #8 and VCU #9

In the spring 2013, Radford will play the winner of a play-in match between U of R and VCU in a quarter-final. Other quarter-final match-ups are JMU at UMW, VMI at ODU, and W&M at Longwood. Winners of the quarter-finals move to the CCRC final four on April 13/14, 2013 that will be held at the University of Richmond. The CCRC champion expects to get a bid to the USA Rugby round of 16 of the D2 championship.

Play-off Bracket