Terrace Standard Wednesday, July 22, 2015
SPORTS
www.terracestandard.com A23
Northmen slam Gnats in shutout win By: CECILE FAVRON
IT WAS a shutout win for the Terrace Northmen rugby team who defeated the PG Gnats 29-0 at their final home game of the season last week. “It was a physically intense game, lots of big tackles and good defence displayed by both sides,” said the Northmen’s Adam Linteris of the July 11 match. The game started out extremely close with the Northmen only scoring once in the first half and starting the second half with a slim 5-0 lead. As the game wore on, the speed and conditioning of the Terrace back line took over scoring four tries in the final half and leading them to victory. Conor Watson, Jonathon Doane, Mike Meijer, Werner Pienaar, and Tyson Stoochnoff all scored tries in the game with the Northmen captain Walker Main converting two of the tries. After the match, the Gnats awarded their opponents Craig Dunfield as the best forward Northmen and Werner Pienaar as the best back line player. This was Terrace’s second time battling the Gnats this season after they lost 19-17 while on the road last May. But the team says they have worked hard to improve their game for the rematch. “We kicked a lot more than we usually do, which allowed our backs to take advantage of their speed and wear the PG side down,” said Linteris. “It’s something we have worked on quite a bit since our first game
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TERRACE NORTHMEN Walker Main, Mark Wilson and Phil Blundon tackle a Prince George Gnats player. with them and it really paid off.” It was a tough game that saw a lot of penalties on both sides, Linteris noted. The Northmen defence was solid throughout the game and shut down any scoring chances the Gnats had. The hard work to prepare for this game paid off as Terrace’s
etween The Ed Sullivan Show and Bonanza there were ads. I suspect they were more effective in whipping up consumer demand if for no other reason than television was still in its infancy then and viewers more naive and therefore more susceptible to the lies of Madmen. That was 1964. I was 15 and like the rest of the male children in my boom baby cohort, I was captivated by the ad showing a Corvair Monza being driven at warp speed over a tortuous route across swampland to demonstrate its stability. A year later, a bright young attorney from Connecticut by the name of Ralph Nader wrote a book called Unsafe at any Speed in which he convincingly argued that when it came to auto manufacture in North America, speed, power, and style rode in the front seat while public safety sat in the back. Nader devoted an entire chapter to the dangerously unstable Corvair and how it came to be that way. General Motors, the maker of the Corvair, responded by hiring sleuths to keep him under surveillance, by tapping his phone, by employing the most sophisticated electronic eavesdropping technology at the time to overhear his private conversations, and by making threatening phone calls to him. They hired young women for the purpose of entrapping him into illicit relationships and harassed his acquaintances. They attempted to cast Nader as a homosexual, which would be an ineffective strategy today, but was ruinous to someone’s reputation 50 years ago. The
back line exposed any defensive openings in their opponents lineup resulting in the victory. “The Terrace back line showed a lot of talent and athleticism with constant pressure and good ball movement,” Linteris said. He says that, although the Northmen defence was solid and the tackling was for-the-most-part
strong, the team still needs to work on consistency if they are going to make it to provincials. It has been a good season for the Northmen who beat the William’s Lake Rustlers for the first time in years at a home game in May. Now the Rustlers, who defeated PG in two games this season, are the only thing that stands between
attack on Nader’s public image became so in Viet Nam, Union Carbide in Bhopal, vile that he sought remedy by appealing to the actions of Exxon in Valdez, the Wall his government. Ultimately, GM president, Street meltdown, and BP in the Gulf to get James Roche, was compelled to appear a flavour of what these malign entities are before a US Senate subcapable. committee and apoloUnderstanding that gize to Nader for his in the US, a series of company’s campaign Supreme Court rulings of intimidation against beginning with Chief him. Justice Waite in 1886 It’s fortunate, and a and culminating with credit to Nader’s valour Citizens United versus that the automakers’ jithe Federal Election had against him didn’t Commission in 2010 succeed because countmade legal the absurd less lives have been notion that inanimate saved and you and I ride corporations deserve the more safely, in better same rights (but not the engineered cars, trucks, same responsibilities) SKEENA ANGLER and vans equipped with as living humans, critics ROB BROWN airbags and the like as a have tried to determine result of his tenacious what kind of people consumer advocacy. Corporations would be What fascinated and and found the answer in shocked much of the The Diagnostic and Stapublic then, was not tistical Manual of Menonly the vicious response by the corpo- tal Disorders, the go-to book for shrinks, rate car companies to criticism, but that where corporate behaviour neatly conNader had uncovered that the auto giants forms with the checklist for those afflicted had knowingly compromised public safe- with antisocial personality disorder, that ty rather than forgo profit. Since the time group of people who refuse to take responof the Corvair rollover and the Pinto with sibility for their actions, who lack morals the exploding gas tank, we have witnessed and consciences, to whom we refer to as hundreds of egregious and more spectacu- sociopaths. lar examples of corporations disregardWhy and how a group of decent individing the well-being of people and their uals cohere under a corporate infrastrucsurroundings in favour of their bottom ture and morph into a dangerous entity is line. Consider the chemical corporations stuff of doctoral theses. More important
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the Northmen and provincials. “While we did really well in this game, we have some stuff to work on if we hope to go to Williams lake and beat them on their home turf,” said Linteris. The winner of the final game on July 25 will go on to represent the north at the Saratoga provincial cup in September.
to us is knowing that they do. Alcan has knowingly polluted our environment for five decades at the expense of the health of its workers and the citizens of Kitimat and the Terrace area; the number of cases of bladder cancer and bone disease are proof positive that this is so. The company has only made improvements when forced to by its union and government. It has joined with Eurocan to contaminate the Douglas Channel. It has trampled on the rights of First Nations. It has generated power at a cost of $5 an hour and sold it to us at $71. The village of Kemano, with its breath taking setting and the finest coho fishing in the world could have been made into a world class tourist destination. Instead of donating it to the BC government or at the very least put it up for sale to private developers, Alcan had it burned to the ground. Alcan is like a big mean dog that can only be reined in with a stout choke chain forged from strict regulations and held by a strong firm hand of big government. Instead, we have a small government that genuflects before corporations, has weakened regulations or made them ineffectual by reducing the level of their enforcement. This is a government that has created a department within what was formerly, and more sensibly, called the Ministry of the Environment whose sole function is to assist developers and corporations through the approval process more expeditiously. That same government is about to give Alcan permission to add more poison to the environment and further compromise your health.