Stillorgan 19 - 12 Barnhall
J3 League - Nov 2nd, 2008
This is my shobsy of te year out of the way.
Great day in the fortress on Sunday. During warm up we were all very quiet, i was thinking it was either becasue we were so focused...or else we all had an extreamly good halloween, it turned out to be the latter in the first half.
Barnhall kicked off to us and we played up the hill. For the first 10 minutes it was all pretty much a case of good terretory of Stillorgan (which is not the norm) but every time we got into barnhall territory we gave away penalties with barnhall kicking for touch. It was a case of us testing the ref and the ref making some dubious decisions but all in all, we were ill disciplined and should have learned after the first five minutes Barnhalls lineout was very effective. They had two string beans ands were claiming good clean ball for they\'re backs to strech the legs and the farwards to get on the front foot and the breakdown. Penalty given away by myself for playing the ball off my feet. An easy 3 points to Barnhall. The first half was primarily played between their 10 and our 22. We did get ball around there 22 and won a penalty. Their prop going in off his feet. Timmy slot it over to bring it all square.
The rest of the half culminated in us getting frustrated with ref\'s decisions and losing lineout possession. Barnhall were happy to take another 6 points from the boot and go in at the half 9-3 to the good.
During the first half we didn\'t retain possession to get the shifter/wheel/pig ball going and get the backs running. When Colm Tricker than Tricker and Peter got ball in hand they broke the gain line on more than one occassion but we failed to recycle and didn\'t gte phases together. Frustration boiled in a few of us due to the poor performance and the ref, something that we have improved on from last year which killed us.
Half time talk was we\'re not losing a very winnable game and that\'s the bad half out of the way. Lets hit the ground running in the second half.
Second Half:
We hit the ground running. From Shobsy drop off we won a penalty outside the 22 on the left. Timmy hit another clean kick and we had narrowed to 9-6 immediately. From the resulting drop off we got possession right back down in Barnhalls half and for the most part, that\'s where the game was played. We did improve ball retention however when we got the ball to the backs, it seemed from a farwards point of view that we were losing 6-7 yards before taking it to their defense, hence not getting into the strike zone enough. The game took the same pattern of not much exciting rugby as when we had possession it went to the lineout and to be fair, we underperformed big time. This poor lineout left us giving up good terriroty and letting barnhall off the hook. Eventually we reap a reward with yet another penalty around the 10 on the right. Timmy again kicked a monster of a penalty and we drew level. Game on.
Pádráig and trick managed to provoke the barnhall 7 enough to swing for tricky and he got the line for 10...he was a lucky man becasue Colm looked like he was out for blood for his poor defenseless sibling.
We camped on their line for about 10 odd minutes on the corner. The did very well at keeping us out although we got over the line on two occassions(a bit of a sore point for Noel who nearly came to tears) Ball was grounded but ref didn\'t see it so 5 meter 7 man scrums. Eventually after knocking on the door, a knock on occured and barnhall got out of jail. Back to full complement came barnhall but territory remained in our favour due to good rucking and good kicks from \'the wizard\' shobsy. A maul developed aroud the 22 on the right. There wasn\'t a barnhall man to be seen on the blind side and doddsy strolled in for the match turning try...Moses parted to sea for him.
Again Timmy hit a cracker to conver t and the score was 16 - 9 in our favour.
From the resulting drop off and from my hard work for th elast pervious 20minutes i shobsyed the drop off and knocked on. This gave barnhall their forst taste of attacking rugby in the second half. From the scrum came a ruck. The ref some how penalised Dick McMahon for hands in the ruck and they slot over the easiest 3 pointer. 16-12.
Normality resumed and the game was played in barnhalls half, good hands from both backs and forwards streched barnhall and their defense couldn\'t handle it so they gave away another penalty. Q timmy - 19-12. They also hand a second man binned with about 13 minutes to go for choking Pádraig (DeNiro) Shanahan. Best contribution to the game was his acting.
Barnhall never looked like crossing our line and we held out for not a pretty but a good win over who are now our rivals...barnhall.
Negatives:
A bit of poor dicipline crept into our game again.
Didn\'t retain ball to make possession count and get the phases and the backs going.
Lineout - poor.
Positives:
Ability to come back from 6 down and win by 7.
The back three did well under high back and returning kicks.
Winning ugly has to be done and we found out we can dig in and do it.
Timmy after 9 days of beer arriving at 2.25 and through the beer goggles picking the right set of posts to shoot for on all but one occassion.
To reitterate Daniel and Doddsy...training. Everyone said they\'d be there. J4\'s - the only thing missing on Saturday was that little bit of cutness to spot the gap. The game was played in terenure\'s half and the score line flattered. Good performance.
See you all tomorrow night,
Match report by Brian \'Baby shambles / Rat\' Shanahan