The New York Rugby Club opened their MetNY DI season with a tough 16-7 defeat of Long Island Saturday. 

Labelled a big win by the NYRFC players, the game was decided by three penalty kicks from Badger Denehy for New York. Benehy also converted his team's only try, scored by Clark Bond on debut.

Long Island captian Lance Rea said he was disappointed with the loss, but not the l;evel of effort from his players.

"They wouldn't let us play with the ball," Rea said. "I thought we played better than I might have expected. We didn't have a great preseason and we came in a bit cold. We played really good defense and I think we were more disciplined. But when we did have the ball the forwards didn't do enough work to get the backs in a position to play with it."