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Valley Red show true hallmarks of champions

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VALLEY, the paramount leaders of Hong Kong rugby in the 1990s, underlined their champion status when they won the First Division League title by defeating Aberdeen 30-15 at the Aberdeen Sports Ground yesterday.

Playing under the banner of Colombia Coffee Valley Red, the champions were wide awake to the fact that they had to beat Aberdeen to dispel any mathematical chance left for arch-rivals Football Club to sneak away with the title.

They duly did that with stand-in scrum-half Richard Nicholas scoring two of his side's four tries - one in each half. Valley Red's other tries came from centre Vaughan Going and substitute Tom Hall.

But the best try of the day, and one of the best of the season, was scored by Aberdeen, thanks to the visionary zeal of their Hong Kong centre Warren Warner.

Trailing 8-22 and with Valley attacking deep inside Aberdeen's 22, Warner intercepted a pass and ran strongly down the left flank. Spotting the speedier Valley full-back Matt Dowling on course to cut him off, Warner cleverly kicked across having seen Aberdeen full-back Luke Nabaro and winger Toby Hunn deep on the right flank. Nabaro beautifully collected the deep kick right under the Valley goal posts to dot down a lovely try.

The goal saw Aberdeen move within seven points of Valley Red. But Valley, as they have showed all this season, have a knack of moving up a gear when they feel threatened. With their forwards firing, Valley Red immediately launched another attack on the Aberdeen goal-line. From a five-metre scrum, Nicholas, coming in for the absent John Crombie, burrowed his way behind the bodies of Valley's powerful back row of John Dingley, Brent Edwards and Stuart Krohn, to score his second try.

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