The Bayside Sharks gave the home crowd plenty to cheer about as they knocked off the UBC Old Boys Ravens 24-17 in Canadian Direct Insurance premier rugby league play at South Surrey Athletic Park Saturday.

The win levels the Sharks' record at 1-1 following a tough road loss to defending B.C. champion Capilano in the opening week of the season.

"We'll take it," said Bayside coach Pat Kearney. "Nothing in this league is ever given to you and you have to work for every win. We're happy to be 1-1 and we're always happy to win at South Surrey. It's a good start to our home schedule and hopefully it sends a message to the rest of the league that if you're coming to South Surrey you're in for a good fight."

The Bayside attack lacked finish for much of the opening half but the Sharks were bailed out by kicker Pete Clifford who connected on two penalty kicks and a drop goal to stake the home side to a 9-5 lead at the break.

The Sharks got into the swim of things in the second half with tries from Adam Timler and Gurvinder Kalar to stay one step ahead of the hard-charging Ravens. Clifford rounded out the Bayside scoring with one conversion.

"We played a good first half and even though it took us more than 40 minutes to get in the end zone and score some tries, we're lucky enough to have steady kicking from Pete," Kearney said. "The whole game was a one-score game and it could have swung either way at the end of the game. The good thing is we were able to seal the deal by playing some shutdown rugby in the last five minutes to make sure they stayed out of our end zone. It was a good allaround performance from offence, defence, tackling and kicking."

The Sharks will have to be at their best this weekend when they travel to Victoria to take on the Castaway Wanderers.

Elsewhere, the Surrey Beavers' offense sputtered and died on the banks of the Thompson River in a disappointing 10-6 loss to Kamloops in Okanagan Springs Brewery first division action.

The Beavers surrendered a try in the opening five minutes of play and second major shortly before halftime to give the home side a healthy head start.

Despite numerous forays deep in Kamloops territory over the course of the game, the Beavers had to settle for a pair of Ryno Jaccobs penalties to account for all of their scoring.

"We played pretty good up there," said Beavers coach Kevin Taylor. "There were things in our game that we did much better than the week before. We didn't rely on running the ball out of our end all the time and we used our kicking game a lot more. We outplayed them in a lot of areas of the game but we just couldn't finish. We got right down close to their goal line several times but we couldn't push it across. The guys got white line fever I guess and none of the bounces went our way. It just wasn't our day. We did our best but you can't win them all."

The Beavers are now idle until after Thanksgiving.

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