Stillorgan 28 - Railway Union 8
J3 League - Feb 13, 2005
On a blustery afternoon in Bird Avenue, Stillorgan maintained their 100% record in the league with a seventh successive victory.
Despite the number of incidents before kickoff - Wes forgetting his shorts and returning to Ranelagh for them, Donnacha pulling up injured in the warm-up and Hops going absolutely balistic in his attempts to fire up the team in the dressing room - Stillorgan took to the field focussed and playing into a gale. As expected, we found ourselves doing most of the defending for the first 15 minutes but a great tackle by someone (can't remember who) as Railway Union tried to go wide resulted in a turnover and quick off load to Patrick who ran from his own 10 to score the games opening try.
Railway Union came back strong and 10 minutes later used their powerful maul off a lineout to score a try. Railway Union tacked on a penalty before half-time to leave the score 5-8 at the break.
A few brief words at half-time and it was decided to kick everything into the RU end and force them to play back into the wind for the second half. This tactic soon payed dividends with the human cannon-ball Hops took a scissors pass off Patrick and cut through 3 RU would-be tacklers to score Stillorgan's second try of the game.
Stillorgan were very much in control now we had the lead and the wind. Ten minutes later we were crossing the line again as quick ball across the backline found our blind-side Danny to score near the corner. Despite missing two easier kicks ealier, Paul converted from the sideline. Paul popped over two more penalties and the game was all but over. That was until we had the best try of the game involving Garrett, Simon and Fabien. Great support running saw them exchange passes before Fabien finally barged over the line for the last score of the game.
So another good result and no new injuries so things are looking okay for our trip to Naas next week. Good performances all round - Stephen at 9 on his return from injury, Patrick at 10 and Hops 'I'm up to my eyeballs on steroids' at 12. The forwards as always set up the platform for victory so my Man of the Match award would go to anyone of the back row trio - Danny, Bob or Fabien - who were outstanding on the day. The moment of the day had to be Hops' asking us to box the heads off each other in the dressing room before the game in an attempt to fire us up - just as well as John Casserly wasn't around or a few of probably wouldn't have made it on to the field.
Match report by Leo