Nrt Kildare 19 - Stillorgan RFC 17
J4 League - Nov 25, 2006
The late Jimmy Greaves spoke some amount of bull in his time, but he did say that football is a game of two halves. Stillorgan on Saturday proved this to be also true of rugby.
El Captain Fidel's policy of dropping latecomers has obviously paid dividends with no more than two arriving late to the wilds of Co. Kildare.
Awaiting the men of the Parish was a muddy field, typical of just about every rugby pitch I've ever been on outside of Dublin. Following a very productive warm-up session, Captain Fidel roused the Stillorgan troops with a session of on the spot jogging and face slapping.
Following some pre-game confusion, it was decided to leave Keaven off the field and a reshuffle of the team named on Friday saw Ross O'D step in on the wing.
The first 20 minutes of the game were punctuated by some shocking displays of tackling. I say displays, which might serve to indicate some tackling may have taken place, but for the first 20 minutes, it would seem that there wasn't any! North Kildare soon realised there were gaps to be exploited and they were right, clocking up 12 points in as many minutes. A strong well organised drive forward by Stillorgan proved that there was a spirit in the visitors. The drive seemed to be rewarded with fine try by Shane, only to be disallowed by the ref in one of his poorer decisions on the day. The Kildare out-half the demonstrated why he may not be playing for a higher level team by missing touch for the first of many occasions. This was run straight back and following a series of errors on both sides that was reminiscent of an Eircom League goal-mouth scramble, John Stokes touched down for the first five points of the day for Stillorgan.
North Kildare soon responded, again exploiting gaps in the back divsion making the score 19 - 5.
Harsh words at half time from Fidel, combined with some substitutions and positional changes, made for a different Stillorgan taking to the field for the second half. Ronan moved from Scrum Half to the Wing, Ross taking up the No. 9 spot. Keith and Nigel took to the field and changed the way the game was played with immediate effect, taking the ball at the back of rucks and drawing defenders in close, enabling ground to be made out wide. This resulted in a well worked try, put over by Martin and converted by Liam.
Most of the second half was played at Kildare's end of the pitch and they put up a gutsy defence. The only sustained period of pressure from Kildare resulted in a missed penalty. With about 5 minutes to go, Mark Harte went over for a third try. From that point there was certainly a feeling that the match was there for the taking, but it proved not to be the case. Still, encouragement can be taken from having kept the home team scoreless in the second half and from having the spirit not to let heads go down based on the first quarter of the match.
If there are lessons to be learned from Saturday they would be Tackle Tackle Tackle. The number of missed tackles were too high to count (as the writer only has 10 fingers and 10 toes), and certainly the second Kildare try could have been easily avoided if any one of the FOUR missed tackles on their No. 12 had been made as he had no support behind. Another lesson would be communication. At no point in the first half could any player be heard calling comrades to fill gaps.
Great performances could be seen from 1 - 21 on Saturday, Mark proved to be a capable Full Back in the first half and certainly plugged the gap at centre when he changed position at half time. Ronan had a decent first half at No. 9, but proved a better back. More time in the position will hopefully give him the confidence to yell at his teammates (lord knows they need yelling at!). Ger had a solid game, joining in Keith and Nigel's crashball fest and defending stoutly.
All in all it's fair to say it was a point well earned.
Next Saturday sees CYM visit Bird Avenue. It'll be interesting to see which Stillorgan J4 team shows up.
Match report by Michael Kirwan