Wild comeback, late penalty miss send New England Free Jacks back to Major League Rugby championship game
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Stymied after a New England penalty, Chicago set up for a 3-point kick that would have pushed it past the team it tied at 11-5 in the regular season — New England was the top seed, and thus hosted Saturday, on a tiebreaker — plus lost to, 23-17, in last year's conference final.
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Chris Hilsenbeck, however, struck the near upright.
Rugby man
— The Rugby Network (@therugbynetwork)
'Isn't it a beautiful thing, the game of rugby, when it's won with the width of a post?,' Free Jacks coach Ryan Martin said on the ESPN broadcast. 'Chicago were fantastic, weren't they? That's what you expect. Just throwing punches the whole game. We had to absorb it, then we gave a few back in the second half.'
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Hilsenbeck scored a penalty and a conversion in the first half, which with Tim Swiel's 11th-minute try put Chicago up, 10-0, at the break. The deficit would have been deeper, but New England's Paula Balekana raced down and stripped Bryce Campbell on a breakaway just short of the goal line.
BALEKANA ISNT HUMAN 😳
— The Rugby Network (@therugbynetwork)
Noah Brown and Hilsenbeck made it 17-0 before New England's comeback, which included two conversion kicks from Dan Hollinshead. (Ciquera's try was scored directly under the goalposts, which grants an automatic 2-point conversion under MLR rules.)
Hilsenbeck made it 20-14 in the 61st minute on a penalty goal, but missed another in the 64th that would have extended the Chicago lead.
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