By Sam Laskaris
The Northern Red Knights junior football team keeps on racking up lopsided victories.
The Red Knights’ latest victims were their perennial rivals, Etobicoke’s Richview Saints.
Northern defeated the visiting Saints by a whopping 60-6 score this past Friday in a high school match played at Clarke Pulford Field.
The score could conceivably have been much higher but officials kept the game clock running throughout the second half.
With the victory the Red Knights improved their 2022 record to a perfect 4-0. Northern now has one regular season match remaining.
That contest will be this Friday, at home, against the 1-3 Western Tech Colts. The opening kickoff is scheduled for 1 p.m.
Northern has collectively outscored its opponents 188-22 this season. The Red Knights have scored more points on offence than two 3-1 teams, the Etobicoke Rams and Leaside Lancers, who have scored 78 and 42 points, respectively, in their four outings thus far.
Red Knights’ head coach John Lombardi was obviously impressed with the efforts from his charges against Richview.
“We had sort of stellar games from our usual suspects,” Lombardi said, adding some of the club’s offensive leaders thus far this season including Will Sievert, Hayden Vincent-Francis and Miguel Collado all scored touchdowns.
Logan Michand added a pair of TDs for the Red Knights. Others who scored majors included Reilly McMahon and Luc Marchand.
Even Ben Best, the Red Knights’ star defensive tackle, got in on the scoring.
“Big Ben our tackle ran in a touchdown on a quarterback sneak which was a strange play but nonetheless we put him in quarterback and he did a great job,” Lombardi said.
The Red Knights’ scoring was rounded out by kicker Johnny Musson, who had 12 points, including successfully booting a field goal.
Though his main job is to help prevent opponents from scoring, Best was thrilled he was able to contribute offensively as well.
“That was pretty awesome,” he said of the designed play which allowed him to receive a snap and carry it into the end zone for a major.
Red Knights’ inside linebacker Nathan Moorhead also had a solid outing.
“The defence played great until the last two minutes when they got a run in,” Moorhead said.
Moorhead added he was pleased to see the members of the Northern D get some interceptions, including Marchand, who had a pick six.
“We executed our plays in the first half amazing,” Lombardi said. “The second half we only ran the ball once because we ran the clock and we got two touchdowns on punt returns. We never really got to play much (on offence) in the second half.”
Red Knights’ star quarterback Riley Chalmers didn’t seem to mind a defensive star – Best – replaced him at pivot momentarily.
“That was obviously a highlight of the game,” Chalmers said of Best’s TD.
Chalmers was for the most part very content with how the game transpired.
“I thought that our offense played pretty well and our defence played amazing,” he said. “As always there are always a couple of things we need to work on. We have to work on running our close yardage offence. We weren’t able to do that today. We had a couple of plays down near the goal line that we couldn’t convert.”
