Two minutes into the Cal rugby game against Stanford, a lone cleat lay in the middle of the field, abandoned by its owner who couldn’t care less about his lack of footwear.

While the 2015 “Big Scrum” game may go down in history as a Cal win, those who attended might remember it more fondly as the “game of lost shoes.” With two more cleats lost throughout the game, the flying footwear was representative of a night where both Stanford and Cal kicked up their heels in an exciting match, which was more eventful than the 78-3 scoreboard indicates.

With the Bears leading 19-3 with 4:20 left in the first half, Cal sophomore flyhalf Jamie Howells prepared for a conversion. He paused, looked up and kicked the ball, which glided between the posts before landing softly on the other side of the goal. As a fan called out, “Beautiful, Jamie!” from the sidelines, Howells jogged back into place, all-business, ready to resume play, joining the rest of the mostly freshmen and sophomore players on his team.

“I thought the first half was pretty sloppy,” Howells said. “We had a tough time getting the ball up quick, but definitely a credit to Stanford. They kept the ball in hand and kept possession for a long time in that first half. I thought we kind of stuck to it though, and toward the end we started to look better. We kept our shape better at the end.”

After a quick pause to huddle at the half, both teams retook the field, ready for the second round of play. While the break gave the struggling Stanford team a chance to catch its breath, the 10 minutes wouldn’t prove enough of a breather for the Cardinal players. For most of them, this match was their 420th minute of play in the last 12 days.

“Obviously we were overmatched I think with experience, but I was pretty happy with it,” said Stanford’s head coach Matt Sherman. “The last 20 minutes got away from us. I think we fatigued with the pace and physicality, but I thought that the first 60 minutes we did very well. … We had three freshmen out there in their fourth month of rugby, and I thought they played admirably.”

Stanford’s only tally on the scoreboard came from a penalty kick in the first half, which provided the Cardinal a mere three points, not nearly enough to compensate for the Bears’ offensive spurts throughout the rest of the game.

Despite a number of fumbled plays, Cal had moments of near-perfect execution. One such moment came late in the second half when Cal’s outside center, sophomore Billy Maggs, gained possession of the ball and took off running. Sprinting three-quarters of the field, he breezed past Stanford’s last three defensive players who stumbled, unable to keep their feet moving fast enough.

While the run was one instance of Cal’s stellar play, the youngest Bears players have a lot to work on. But the chance to play in a high-stakes game, the Scrum Axe no less, was one step towards creating depth in Cal’s roster for years to come.

“I think the performances were a bit of a mixed bag,” said head coach Jack Clark. “I think some of the guys did pretty well for themselves, and you know, other guys probably tried to do too much and kind of got over their skis a little bit. We had some errors, we kind of broke our system from time to time. I think there’s a saying, ‘You’ve got to crack some eggs to make an omelette.’ … You need some time under your belt, like most things in life, and rugby’s one of those.”

Jessi McDonald covers rugby. Contact her at [email protected].