By Phil Caplan, Date: 13/11/13
Vereya, Russia’s most successful rugby league club, has again been crowned champions after a comprehensive aggregate win over Moscow Storm. It is the Bears’ fourth successive title and came after they beat Storm 52-12 in the first leg and wrapped up the title with another emphatic win, 52-10, in Naro-Fominsk.
With such a lead after the first encounter, Vereya coach Alex Lysokon fielded seven under-18 players, one of whom, Denis Tyulenev, scored a try and combined well with Maksim Suchkov and Vladimir Vlasyuk. Eighteen-year-old winger Roman Safronov scored two tries in an impressive individual performance.
Lysokon said, “I was very impressed by the young players’ performance in the final; I have to pay tribute to the performance of Storm captain, Vadim Fedchuk, who played really well. Unfortunately for them they didn’t have really good quality playmakers and that was a big difference.”
To reach the final, Storm travelled to Saint Petersburg to take on Northern Conference champions Nevskaya Zastava, defeating them 62-8 while Vereya played the Southern Conference champions Patriot Rostov, dispatching them 58-10.
