Metropolis, Chicago Lions and Cincinnati Wolfhounds all won Saturday to go to 3-0 in the Midwest DI club leagues.

Chicago had to battle all the way with Palmer, getting two late penalty kicks to beat Palmer 26-24. Palmer, national #3 last season, are now 1-2 having lost two very tight games. The other team to beat them was Metropolis, who dispatched the Milwaukee Barbarians 36-13 in Wisconsin.

Cincinnati put in a workmanlike effort over in-state rivals Columbus 31-10.

Also victorious this weekend were the Detroit Tradesmen and Chicago Griffins, both winning critical tilts to move to 2-1.

The Griffins slammed the Chicago Blaze 58-17.

"We played well enough," said Griffins Head Coach Wez Parkes. "But we missed a lot of opportunities, especially a lot of overloads. Our good play was creating those opportunities; we were just not identifying them. When we play tighter games we're going to have to take advantage of those."

The Griffins got a good 35 minuntes off the bench from new prop Niko Mafuli, and Parkes was also pleased with the play of developing hooker James McKegg.

Lock Eric Jacobsen has done well to step up into a leadership role, and so has Andrew Suniula, who is back from injury and was instrumental Saturday. Flanker Ryan McBride scored the opening try for the Griffins at 15 minutes, and that started a torrid scoring period during which Jacobsen, wing Brendan Brown scored a try and Suniula scored two to stake the team to a 29-5 lead with the wind.

Suniula helped set up several more tries in the second half. Tim Mullins scored two, and fullback Corey Quaglia scored two, while Brown got his second. Suniula added three conversions for a total points haul of 20.


Meanwhile the Tradesmen battled a very wet, cold, windy day to beat Indianapolis 22-10 in Indiana.

Adam Saad, Stuart Roche, and Mohammed Daher all scored tries to stake the Tradesmen to a 22-0 lead. With Andy Dauser in the sin-bin late for Detroit, the Impalas scored two.

The difficult conditions perhaps contributed to Detroit not getting the bonus for four tries, but they are secure in 2nd in the Midwest East Pool 1.