It was a tale of two halves for the Prince George Kodiaks in their season opener as they fell 33-13 to the Westshore Rebels at a near-capacity Masich Place Stadium.
“We didn’t play four quarters of football,” said Kodiaks Head Coach Jamie Boreham.
“We had a good training camp and we saw some unexpected things tonight that we hadn’t been that type of team, that’s disappointing to take some steps back, for sure.”
The Kodiaks took a 10-5 lead heading into the second half, with Brady Harper drilling a 45-yard field goal and Quarterback Sawyer Thiessen taking it himself for a 14-yard touchdown run.
“O-line had a great front, had a nice pin-and-pull, was able to find an alley through the middle, it’s a perfect play call by coach, and just capitalized it with a six,” Thiessen said.
The Kodiaks appeared to put six more points on the board with a pick-six late in the second quarter, but it was called back on a roughing the passer call.
“The first half, it wasn’t even a real good half of football,” Boreham said.
“We did some good things, we pushed, we pulled, we controlled some parts of the game, our special teams were on point, we won field position which set up the offence to move the ball, we played as a team in that first half, even though our tackling wasn’t good, our tackling wasn’t good all night, but we didn’t get punished for it in the first half.”
The Rebels shot out of the locker room like a cannon in the second half, opening with a three-play, 80-yard touchdown drive.
From then on, it was almost all Rebels as they piled on three more touchdowns in the half.
Harper tacked on a 27-yard field goal for the Kodiaks in the second half as well.
“PG came out strong in the first half, we were competing back and forth, which was very exciting to see, but our guys being able to rally at half time, come out and put up the second half we did just shows the kind of mental toughness our guys are able to conquer,” said Rebels Head Coach Connor Bryan.
“We really noticed the inside of our d-line was being pretty dominant in the run game giving our o-line some trouble, so we made the adjustment to start attacking the perimeter, giving our speedy running back out on the outside, giving him space to work with, a lot of misdirection counters, just to kind of keep that defence on their toes, which I think we did a good job of doing.”
“Heck of a team, good athletes, strong,” Boreham said of the Rebels.
“They play with speed, they play aggressive, hats off to them for making some adjustments, and kicking our butts in the second half. We have some things to fix, some things to look at, how we can be better, and do things better.”
The Kodiaks will now turn their attention to the Kamloops Broncos, who are coming off a 50-7 loss to the Vancouver Island Raiders.
The full Kodiaks schedule is here.
Something going on in the Prince George area you think people should know about?
Send us a news tip by emailing [email protected].
