Monkstown 16 - Stillorgan 17
J3 League - Dec 04, 2005
Well what can I say we made it 3 wins out of 4 after winning our 3rd League Match in a row. Did we deserve to win this match well that is debatable but a win is a win so we will take it. I will not go on too much as I think Tony said it all after the game but we are playing like we are training. We played with the wind in the first half, by kicking the ball up the pitch and making them run it back at us.
Monkstown were a typical Monkstown team with a very big pack and not much outside first centre. We won a scrum in the middle of the park in the first 5 minutes, Eoin passed the ball to the left to Garrett (not allowed say me anymore) who took on his centre half broke the tackle to pass to Maircin who took a great line beat 3 defenders to score under the posts. Stephen Converted to make it 7-0. They kicked off to our right hand corner, ref gave them a penalty. They kicked to touch, they won their lineout and mauled us up the pitch (this was to become the theme of the afternoon). We stopped them that time but ref gave them another penalty which they kicked to touch and mauled us again this time over the line for a try which they did not convert to make it 7-5. We then did not really use the wind or our superior backs to our advantage trying to take them on up front too much which more often then not led to turnovers. After another relieving kick by Stephen up the field we won another penalty in front of the posts which Stephen put over to make it 10-5 at halftime.
The second half we kicked off playing into the wind, one of the very few
times we actually got into their half. They kicked the ball back to us
and basically spent the next 10 minutes on our line which only very good
defence held out. We then finally broke off our line with a great break
that went through lots of hands between backs and forwards. We won a
scrum on their 5m line where the backs scored again off first phase with
an excellent move which we have practised coming off to a tee (Paris for
all those backs reading it) Octavio scored in the left hand corner after
Fergus had come around from the blindside. Stephen got a great
conversion from way out which actually proved to be the difference in
the end. This left us 17-5 up.
Then things started to go wrong for us straight from the kick-off
which we let bounce and was knocked on. This Put Monkstown back in our
22 where they remained for most of the match. Our lineout started to
disintegrate and Monkstown starting pounding our line. They got 2
penalties to make the score 17-11. After that Monkstown came straight
back into our 22 and scored with about 4 minutes to go to make the score
17-16 with a conversion to come, luckily for us he missed!! Stephen then
did a great kick-off over the wingers head to touch 5m from their line,
for the last 3 minutes we kept them inside their 22 to hang on for a
win.
Match report by Garrett Fanning