By Brian Lowe

The Glen Mills Bulls have won the 2005 American National Rugby League championship with a gripping 30-26 come-from-behind victory over the Connecticut Wildcats.

Played at the Jack Pearson Stadium in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, it was a six tries to five contest that turned out to be a game of halves. The Wildcats led 22-8 at halftime, but couldn’t hold off a hard charging Bulls side intent on further cementing its reputation as one of the country’s leading Rugby League clubs.

It was Glen Mills’ sixth national title in eight years and they had to come from third place to do it, the first time that has happened in the League’s history.

The MVP award for the Bulls went to center Scott Nicholas, while the Wildcats’ MVP was lock Andrew Webster.

In the semi-finals, the Bulls racked up a lop-sided 60-12 win against the Philadelphia Fight, while the Wildcats pipped the Northern Raiders 24-22.

The American National Rugby League is an eight-team competition split into two conferences, Lincoln and Franklin, comprising four teams each. At the end of the regular season, the top three placed teams from each conference advance to the post-season with the two first-placed teams earning a first round bye.

Connecticut won the Lincoln Conference with a 7-1 record, while Glen Mills finished third in the Franklin Conference with a 5-3 record.

The League wants to expand the competition to include other parts of the US and to that end a six-team promotional tournament has been scheduled in Phoenix for mid-September.

“Two teams from Phoenix, two teams from California and two from the East will take part in this promotion and development opportunity on September 16th,” AMNRL president David Niu told American Rugby News. “There are a lot of players out West who’d like to get involved and we think this is a good way of developing interest in the game.”

The League’s regular season kicked off in May.

Read the original article at American Rugby News

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