Longhorns rout Bulldogs, advance to NFC semifinal
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August 8, 2007 By Herb Garbutt, Beaver Sports Vaughan Swart shredded the North Bay Bulldog secondary for 258 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Oakville Longhorns to a convincing 41-12 victory Saturday, moving the team within one win of the Northern Football Conference final. "With (Vaughan) it's the yards after the catch. He'll catch a 25-yard pass and turn it into a 60 or 70-yard touchdown," said Longhorn coach Barry Emo. "He possesses excellent vision and he's a strong physical kid so when you put the ball in his hands, good things are going to happen." And it didn't take long for the Longhorns to figure that out. Just 95 seconds after North Bay opened the scoring on Anthony Gauthier's 10-yard interception return, Swart caught Tommy Denison's pass and went 50 yards to the end zone to tie the game. Oakville would dominate the second quarter, putting up 21 points on a two-yard run by Dan Seymour, another 50-yard TD by Swart and a five-yard reception by Will Mayhew to send Oakville into the half up 27-6. Swart would add two more majors (60 and 65 yards) in the third quarter to put the game away. "We watched a lot of game film and came up with a game plan that suited our type of offence," Emo said. "We felt we had athletes that matched up well with their secondary." The game plan was executed to near perfection as Denison completed 16 of 21 passes for 380 yards. Oakville was also effective on the ground, averaging more than five yards per carry as the Longhorns finished with 102 rushing yards. Oakville's defence was equally as impressive, allowing only a touchdown with less than three minutes to play. Mike Borisenko and Stafford Wilson each had eight and a half tackles and a sack. Borisenko also blocked two extra points and forced a fumble while Wilson recovered a fumble. The Longhorns defensive unit will need another strong effort as Oakville will meet the first-place Tri-City Outlaws in Saturday's semifinal. The 7-1 Outlaws blanked Oakville 25-0 in the final game of the regular season. The Longhorns were missing several players for that final game due to previous commitments. Oakville was originally scheduled for a bye that weekend until Sudbury dropped out of the league, forcing the NFC to redraw the schedule. |
Among those missing were three starting offensive linemen, which hindered the team's ability to protect Denison. With the full lineup ready for the semifinal, Emo is confident in his team's ability to keep Tri-City in check. "You take the score out of the equation and look at all the other stats, you wouldn't think it was a 25-0 game." The most encouraging thing for Oakville in that game was that the defence contained the Outlaws' running game- the basis of Tri-City's offence - holding them to 2.5 yards per carry. Oakville continued to excel in that regard against North Bay, holding the Bulldogs to 50 rushing yards on 15 carries. "Hopefully we're not too confident because we hung 41 points on North Bay. Tri-City is the class of the league but it's a good opportunity for us to play spoiler," Emo said. "We played like a team for 60 minutes. It was a Herculean effort from our offence, our defence and our special teams." The Longhorns will need one more effort like that to reach the final when they face Tri City Saturday at 7 p.m. in Cambridge at Rogers Field. Notes: The Longhorns' Marco Pereira returned an interception 80 yards.... Mike Bartello also had an interception and a fumble recovery....Dan Seymour had 87 return yards on five returns.....Dion Clarke had five tackles. |
