Sunderland Spartans 52-14 York St John Jaguars

The Sunderland Spartans have claimed their first win of the season with a 52-14 win at home against York St John Jaguars on their homecoming weekend.

After winning the coin toss, the Spartans elected to receive the ball first and after a failed first drive opened the scoring to make it 6-0. The tally was then quickly doubled and with no available kicker,  the Spartans opted for a two-point conversion to up the score to 14-0.

Sunderland then added another touchdown and two-point conversion to make the score 22-0 with a pick six from Akin Onak. York St John then replied with a touchdown of their own to make it 22-6.

The Spartans then came back and scored with two more passes from quarterback Aaron Wall to make the score 34-6 before the Jaguars brought got another touchdown back from the resulting kick return and completed the two-point conversion to make it 34-14 at halftime.

The Spartans then proceeded to add another two before full time with another passing touchdown and a scrambled ball off a fumble, scored by right defensive tackle Mohamed Ghanem to make the final score 52-14 to the Spartans.

The result gave Sunderland’s Misba Islam his first win as the Spartans’ head coach.

Two of the standout performers from Sundays game were offensive rookie MVP, Daniel Awad, who managed 163 yards for two touchdowns, including a 75 yard pass from Wall.

Awad said: “I would attribute my success first and foremost to God and then to my coaches. They taught me my routes and how to make them sharp and to focus on making the big plays to help seal our team wins.

“I’d also like to give a big thanks to the O-line. They did a great job protecting Aaron. He didn’t have too bad of a game himself.”

Wall also managed 256 passing yards paired with five passing touchdowns for the day, putting him top of the division two passing stats with 383 yards in total across two games. The other three touchdowns came from Zane Osman, Timi Haastrup and Shea Sullivan-McCullagh.

This result was a big improvement for Sunderland compared to last year, when the Spartans came out on the wrong side of the result.

Vice president, Vithunya Chandrakanthan said: “Last year was year zero, no expectations and we just wanted to play all our games.

“This year better numbers mean we can get everyone involved in reps and ensure that injuries are low. Last year we didn’t have enough bodies to comfortably put on the line and we’ve got a quarterback that can throw bullets and knows the sport well.”