Clontarf 43 - Stillorgan 5
J3 League - Feb 13, 2006
Well where do I start the day was a mess from the
Beginning. At 10.20am we are told the match is off due to waterlogged pitch -
all players told. 11am told match back on in Bird avenue - tell all the players
lose our outhalf in the meantime!! So we had to rearrange the backline with
Marcin stepping into outhalf.
Well what can I say we actually won the toss and elected to play up the hill.
Well we kicked off and them immediately ran back at us and got a lineout in our
22m line which they won and promptly mauled us all the way back over our line
(Munster like) they were pretty much unstoppable at the maul with them changing
the point of attack so quickly. They won the ball again off the kick-off and put
us down in our 22. We got a scrum which they pushed us off and won against the
head, they got a penalty which they kicked for touch from the resultant lineout
they again mauled us over. We were 2 tries down without actually touching the
ball!!
This was the Best J3 team I had played against
and they would be a very good J1 team they had a huge very mobile organised pack
but they also had very good backs!! They were changing the point of attack very
quickly making them hard to defend against. We did finally get a little ball
after that but could not break down their defence. They went back down our end
of the pitch and rolled a maul again they suck in our backs as well they ran the
ball out outhalf sucked in the centres to pass to fullback to score. They scored
one more try from Guess what a maul in the first half, hard to blame anyone here
as it was near impossible to stop that maul when it got going!! At half time we
knew we could not win but needed to at least show some pride.
2nd half we kicked off but they scored again from a loose kick which back across
the line for them to score in the corner. From here we finally started played
some good rugby with the forwards taking them on up front and everyone running
it from anywhere. Donnacha and Carlos were particularly prominent. We started to
make our tackles, made a few breaks but there was very little space on the
pitch. The forwards in the second half brilliantly stopped one of their rolling
mauls near our line which gave us a scrum. Our score came from a crash ball near
their line by Carlos which the forwards brilliantly took on to ironically maul
them over the line for Eoin to score. We continued attacking the game turned
into a bit of Barbarians game with both teams throwing the ball around. They did
score twice more in the second half but we played with a lot of passion in that
half - a lot of other teams would have given up and ended up losing 60/70 - nil
but we fought to the end.
Match report by Garrett Fanning