Bermuda 33 Bahamas 5

Bermuda finished this year’s Rugby Americas North Men’s XVs Tournament with a tremendous victory over Bahamas on Saturday.

Brian Archibald’s side scored five tries, two conversions and the same number of penalty goals at North Field, National Sports Centre, with Bahamas breaching the home team’s defence just once.

The result means Bermuda finish their spring campaign with this win following a loss to Jamaica in the RAN competition. They earlier suffered a home friendly defeat against Cayman Islands.

Thomas Greenslade, the Bermuda captain, viewed the Bahamas win as a sign of progress.

“I’m really happy with the end result and it’s excellent for us to win because each time we played we got better,’’ Greenslade said.

“The Cayman Islands game wasn't an official part of the tournament, but it was good that we have a relationship with Cayman.

“That game was a great warm-up test match for us and we lost against Jamaica but, to be honest, Jamaica won the first half and won the second, but we only just lost the game.

“We were building and developing and today was a good result, because everything that we've been training for and working on in each game is better and today it showed.

“We put all the pieces of the building block together and we got the result we wanted, which is a very positive win.”

Bermuda’s three matches this year marked their return to fifteens rugby after four years of inactivity.

“The last time Bermuda played was in 2019 and 2020 was meant to be a decider whether we went to the next level or not,’’ the captain said.

“Covid-19 happened and there hasn’t been international fifteens rugby for us until this year.

“There has been a big hiatus of fifteens rugby across the board, so I’m really proud to see so many young guys playing. We have a very young squad, which is great for development as there are a lot of youth that are coming up.”

Bahamas captain Duran Beadle, scorer of his team’s only points in the first half, conceded that Bermuda were superior.

“The game was hard fought and we made a lot of mistakes but we’re going to learn from them,’’ Beadle said.

“We've got four weeks before we play against Jamaica and we've to take everything from this game and try to play better in that one.

“Right now Bermuda are better than us. We saw some things we could have exploited, but it didn't come out the way we planned.”

Stephen Thompson, the Bahamas coach, whose team face Jamaica at home on June 29, applauded Bermuda.

“First and foremost congratulations to Bermuda, they played really well today,’’ Thompson said.

“Bermuda were very much organise and I thought they played fifteen-man rugby.

“Taking nothing from their win, this is their third match they've played together as a squad.

“It was our first match and we have at least 11 brand-new players in our squad, so a lot of our guys have not seen rugby at this level.”

Bermuda’s Inside centre Hadleigh Tucker scored two tries in the first half, with wing Khabir Dill scoring the other five-pointer. Robin Brickell booted in two conversions for Bermuda to lead 19-5 at the break.

Bermuda extended their lead shortly after the restart when Brickell kicked a penalty.

Full back Rory O’Kelly-Lynch, picked in the starting fifteen after Ja’kee Simons was ruled out because of a tight hamstring, scored a try on his debut after a brilliant offload by flank Jamie Baum.

Lock Aldo Campbell, despite being tackled just before the try line, powered his way over for Bermuda’s fourth try of the match before Brandon Sangster’s penalty finished the home side’s scoring.

Bermuda finished the match with one player less on the field after loose forward Jake Fields was sent to the sin bin for a high tackle.