Stillorgan 0-32 Barnhall
J4 League - Nov 17, 2007
Things generally don't start too well for the J4 team these days! We all arrived for the game at the usual time. We got changed, and went out to get down to the warm up. At this point it started raining! There went our free flowing brand of rugby that saw off Bective the previous week! The warm-up went well, it was a good mix of different elements, but despite Ger and Octo's best efforts everyone seemed a bit flat going out. They won the toss and played with the hill and the [sizable] wind, on the back pitch, behind the church. The kick off was ok, they played with greater intensity in the early exchanges and as a result the Barnhall pack were able to give their backs time and space, and they worked through a pile of phases really quite easily. They then started putting up some high balls to Caoimhan and the lads at the back. As a result of the driving rain, and swirling wind catching said balls was easier said than done. So as a result of a couple of totally blameless knock-on's we had a couple of early scrums. It must be said this was an area where they were very much on top, their loose head was exceptional [IMHO]. They were on top to the extent that we were reminding the ref quite early on about the rule where you are only able to push 1 ½ meters at this level. [Which was embarrassing, but needs must]
Before we knew it we were two tries and a penalty down only 10 or 15 minutes in. It seems that they were happy to 'pig ball' it and go through a few phases close in and then one of their centres would crash through and then they would kick long [rinse and repeat for whole first half]. At this stage we really seemed to think that the world was going to fall in, as everything we were trying was not working and everything they tried worked! Mick came around behind the posts and a couple of straight forward words really made a difference. He simply told us that we were not playing as bad as we thought we were, and that we were only a step or two away from being in the game. At this stage we made some subtle adjustments, the two props swapped sides in the scrum [and started scrumming illegally, going in low and at angles and all kinds of fun and games!], this took a large amount of the sting out of their scrum. Our lineout was going very well indeed, and they had to really work hard to get their own ball cleanly. We then entered the game!
What was hurting us, and hurt us all game was that we did not deal with the wet ball too well indeed. There seemed to be a huge amount of dropped passes and knock on's [Frank taking a crash ball at first centre off his forehead was my personal favourite!]. No one kept stats, but I would love to see some sky sports style stats of tackle counts and error counts, as from the pitch it seemed like we were making a gigantic amount of mistakes, not one bloke or one group, all of us - from 1 to 15. We were competitive for the remainder of the first half, but lost one last try, when they kicked to the corner, we cleared and when they won their own lineout and went through what seemed to be 10 phases [could be wrong!] and scored in the corner, the scorer carrying 2 or 3 blokes over with him. Some ref's would not have given the try, as he could never have seen the ball, but maybe I'm just being picky!
At this stage, with time running out in the first half, our backs got a chance to run at them for the first time [at about 39 mins of first half]. We cut through them a bit easily, but alas they were running from our own 22. We got 60 or 70 meters up the field, with several blokes cutting through or evade crap Barnhall tackles, but they managed to clear to touch and the ref blew up for half time. It was 20 odd to nill, Barnhall. It's a sporting cliché, but we were lucky to be nill :) Second half we had the hill and the wind. We did mean business, but they were playing quite smart, and kicking into space, and chasing the ball with ghusto, furthermore it was playing havoc with things that the leaves were stopping the ball dead. But some good play from them playing up the hill meant that we were camped inside our own 22 for the first 10-15 of the second half. I think you have to give credit where its due, that we did hold them out for 10-15 odd minutes where they were probing our line from side to side, but eventually we did crack, and they scored [their last try].
At this stage we lost a prop and scrums went uncontested, which really did us no harm at all. After the game one of their lads was saying that was 4 games in a row they were killing the other team up front, and the game went uncontested as someone went off. I have to think that will be one of the best pack's we will face. We got back into the game, but every time we tried to take the ball on or spin it out the backs we lost it in a tackle, knocked it on or it was stolen. Barnhall never looked like scoring again, and we spent much of the rest of the game in their 22, but to be fair we only got within 5 meters of the line once or twice. The rest of the game was a series of what if's. We had a series of penalties, which we universally ran, maybe if we kicked one or two and got some points on the board things would have been different, or maybe if we had kicked for touch and used our near dominant lineout. We got some success from pig ball, and keeping it tight in the forwards, but we only did it a few times. Looking back, later on, we were all wondering why we did not do it more. But we did not :(
All I want to say is that I want to play the reverse game at their place in half decent weather, get our best available tight head on the field – and give everything to our backs to run at them :)
Match report by Joe O'Reilly