OVFL: Strong start to the season as the JV Ironmen rout the Cowboys

For Hamilton Ironmen head coach Ken McGuire, he couldn’t have scripted a better start to his team’s season. The Ironmen made a statement in the form of a 50-0 win over the Halton Cowboys Sunday afternoon.

Nowhere to go. Cowboys running back Ben Symianick (#21) runs into a wall of Ironmen. Hamilton’s Maxwell Guy (#8) wraps up Cowboys running back Morgan Rose.

“It was a real team effort. We’ve got a 48-man roster and we got all of them out on the field today in some capacity,” said McGuire, “I’m glad that everybody got a chance to play. We’ve got real good team chemistry,”

The Ironmen took a 28-0 lead after the first quarter off of two touchdown passes from Liam Putt and a pair of rushing scores from backs Stefan Sarabura and Vinny Di Diomede. The offense was stalled after an impressive first quarter. Aside from a rouge courtesy of punter Eric Stevens, the Ironmen didn’t score again until the fourth off of touchdowns from Mackenzie Sadjer, Antony Laughing and a fumble recovery from Brad McLean.

“It was a slow developing game at first, I thought our guys showed great patience early on,” McGuire declared.

It’s no surprise that Coach McGuire was pleased with his team’s performance Sunday afternoon, in particularly with the play of his quarterback.

“I’m extremely happy with our quarterback,” raved McGuire, “Liam did a good job spreading the ball around today, hitting a lot of receivers. He made sure everyone got involved in the offence.”

Putt showed poise in the pocket, completing passes with authority hitting receivers Donta Smith, Mackenzie Sajder and Marc Fournier for touchdowns. While Putt was spreading the ball around on the field, his head coach was spreading some love around off the field. Giving high praise to several of his offensive stars.

“I thought Sarabura had a great game, made some really good runs,” said McGuire of the play of his running back, “and Mark Fournier has been working really hard all week, so it was nice to see him come out and have a good game, he made a beautiful touchdown catch for us in the first.”

While Putt and the offense were busy lighting up the scoreboard, some credit has to go to the defense for managing to hold Halton off of it.

“Obviously our defense played really well, pitching a shutout,” stated McGuire, “Dezain Brooks had a very strong game, he definitely led the defense today. Brad McLean was huge for us as well, scoring off of that fumble recovery.”

Despite all the positives that McGuire took from the win, he still managed to find a couple things that he’d like to address.

“We need to concentrate more on execution,” McGuire pointed out, “we took a couple of procedure penalties, had a couple offsides, just mental errors that we need to correct if we expect to compete with the best in the league.”

The Essex Ravens fit that bill. Hamilton travels to Essex County to play the Ravens next Saturday afternoon in a game that Coach McGuire expects to be a real battle. After beating Brampton 42-21 last Saturday, McGuire knows that his team will have to be ready to play if they expect to improve to 2-0.

“We’re definitely not overconfident,” said McGuire, “we’re going on the road to play a really strong Essex team next week and we’re just going to focus on that game before we think of anything else.

The Ironmen will be at Essex District High School to take on the 1-0 Ravens Saturday June 2[SUP]nd[/SUP]. Game time is at 3:30pm.