Stillorgan 43-0 Suttonians
J3 League - Jan 27, 2008
On the first Decent Sunday weather wise on the year, Stillorgan took the field against Suttonians with a eyed Doddsy who allegedly does not know how he got a swollen eye!! Stillorgan played up the hill against the wind and we started pretty well. The forwards played very well up the hill they were dominating their own lineout and putting their lineout under alot of pressure. The first break through came quite early when Finn punched a hole in the midfield he nearly made it all the way just getting caught short, Garrett was in support to score the try. We continued to control the ball very well attacking them close with Alan making some nice rumbles. We continued to put pressure on with some great mauling by the pack up the right touchline. - the forwards mauled over the line with Ross I think getting the touchdown.
Suttonians did not get into our half much even with the wind we were moving them all over the pitch and possibly could have scored again but for a couple of dropped balls. The backrow of Danny, Bull and Brian were prominent around the pitch and their halfbacks were quite poor or were getting messy ball from their forwards. They had one good forward who nearly broke through in the 1st half was their best player by a mile. We managed to get another try when the forwards again scored from close range with Doddsy I think getting the touchdown. Going into halftime we had nearly reached our goal of 4 tries and we were playing down the hill in the second half.
Second half kicked off and we started to open up - Mac came on the wing. We nearly scored the bonus try with a lovelly move down the blindside with some lovelly passing between doddsy, Mac and timmy but it looked like none of them wanted to score the try so the move broke down. With the good ground we continued to threaten them out wide and another nice move down the left blindside put young Keavan to stretch his legs to run in a try from 50ms for the 4th try. Liam continued to play the ball down in their half and our defense was putting them under alot of pressure as they tried to run the ball out the centre straight into the pack who stipped him of the ball. The ball went to finn who sucked in a couple of defenders and passed out to Mac to score in the corner. Timmy was starting to find his kicking boots again and was knocking over the conversions for Fun.
We continued to press with some lovely interplay between backs and forwards. One break up the middle by richie who did a lovely offload before taking contact led to a try out wide which garrett dummied to score (just to make the kick easier) :-) . Then followed out worst 15 minutes in quite a while when Suttonians were camped on our line with numerous 5m scrums and lineouts but our immense defence held them out. Much to joy of the forwards and the shouts of encouragment from Niall on the sideline :-) - Liam from his own line tried a chip over the top of the upcoming centres - it nearly came off but Suttonians managed to cover it. Suttonians continued to presurrise us but could not get over the line with great tackling from 1-15.
We eventually broke from the shackles and got into their half - liam spotted a half gap and galloped through from 30 mtrs out to score our final Try under the posts.
Overall it was pretty good well balanced performance with a good mix between the backs and forwards. Lineouts went very well I don't think we lost one. Rucking and Mauling was very good too.
We had a bad 15 minutes in the second half where we continued to give away stupid penalties mainly for going over the top and if we do sort out our discipline it will cost us in the big games!! We need to trust our defense which has been excellent all League as we have only conceeded 4 tries in 8 league games one of them was an intercept!! We have our biggest game of the season next Sunday away to Barnhall so richie needs everyone down at training and available for Sunday.
I am currently ringing a couple of clubs to see if we can rearrange our fixture with Trinity for a Evening fixture - trinity said they should be ok with this.
Match report by Garrett Fanning