Renegades retained both the men’s and women’s titles at the season-opening Mad Hatters tournament at the North Field yesterday.

Simon Pettler, the Renegades men’s captain, was pleased with the way his team stood up the late summer heat to beat allcomers.

“The lads did well,” he said. “It’s always a hard day with the heat. No matter what happens it always seems to be a red-hot weekend for Mad Hatters. We tried to put what we did in training into practice and it’s come across, although there’s a lot more work to do before the start of the season.

“In these games it’s only 30 minutes so one mistake can turn a game. All it takes is a knock-on, so it doesn’t give a full reflection of an 80-minute game. It will be a different take come the regular season.”

Pettler was also impressed with what he saw from Renegades’ opponents as they prepare to defend their league title, with the regular season starting after the Rugby Classic in November.

“The standard [overall] is defintely increasing,” he said. “The other teams are stepping up and making us work harder, train harder and challenge harder. There’s been a big push to get the youth players involved and we’ve tried to get our young players more involved.

“A few of our backs were looking really good out there. In the first few games they didn’t quite come together, but in the last game they just cut loose. I’d say maybe Johnny Verling and Robin Brickell both had great games in the backs. Against us, Tashaun DeSilva is always a tough prospect, putting in the big hits. And the young Mariners backs did very well today. They looked good. It’s hard to do the back-to-back games. You have to dig deep and they kept on coming. It was tough for them, but they never gave up,”

Laura Mulligan, the victorious Renegades women’s captain, was equally effusive in her praise for the standard of the female game on the island.

“Women’s rugby in Bermuda is massive right now,” she said. “We’ve had a full squad down here today. Every year the women’s league retains a lot of players but we get a more and more new ones each year and the level is so high - a lot higher than it has been.

“We have been very fortunate that we have had a very solid group of girls who have been playing for 12 years. I think the difference with us is that we come out every year and we just love playing with each other. This tournament is very easy because we’ve just come back off a break and we’re happy to be back playing again.

“I also play for the women’s national team and there’s a lot fo the girls starting to filter through from the touch. They play touch, they play sevens and now they’re moving into contact sevens, which is ideally what the BRFU wants. I never played rugby until I moved here; I played other sports at home, and then played this and moved into contact, so it’s a really good feeder for the national programme, but also it was a lot more social, but I think the standard’s got so high.

“We’re going to Mexico at the end of November to compete in the RAN Sevens tournament, so there’ll be 12 girls going there for that.”