St. Marys College RFC 39-3 Stillorgan
O'Connor Cup - Mar 25, 2008
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail, the saying goes.
Ne'er a truer word spake or wrote.
You can look back as far as two weeks ago to see where things started to go wrong for the J5 faithful. Poor numbers out training, despite Captain Victor Issel Olvera-Smith Delgado Gomez Ruiz Lopez's calls for folks to come out training and it showed on Tuesday.
Anyway, water under the bridge...
Just about everyone showed up on time but a couple of folks who said they'd be out never showed. You know who you are... Liam Kelly did his bit to make sure he's not called up to manage a team next season by showing up at Bird Avenue rather than Templeville Road. Luckily things like Rugby Balls won't prevent us training and Liam got there in time to work on lineouts.
Following a warm-up Issel named his starting XV and there was quality throughout. Following the toss, Stillorgan received the ball and faced into the wind (or strong breeze).
Just as the game kicked off, rain started to come down heavier than it had done all day but it didn't dampen anyones spirits but ball handling became tricky as both the ball and the ground became quite greasy. Mary's opened their account with a penalty inside our 22 much to the disappointment of the home crowd who had obviously come to see a try-fest thanks to the lineout of former AIL stars. Angelo, making his first start of his SRFC career restarted the game and the ball was taken down well. Stillorgan rucked over and briefly managed to turn over possession before losing the ball in a tackle. The Ref played advantage but that was soon stopped when one of Mary's 2nd rowers fended off Mark Cooling's attempted tackle with an elbow to Mark's face resulting in a split lip. The referee awarded us a penalty. Milky, who was press ganged into place kicking duty only moments earlier, slotted the ball over for what turned out to be our only score of the game. While the penalty was being taken, Mark received treatment, however as the bleeding couldn't be controlled on the pitch, Ger was called into action as a blood sub to make his first appearance of the season.
It's hard to recall how Mary's scored all of their tries, but all came from open play, bar one which was mauled over in the first half but it certainly seemed, from the sideline that there was little or no communication to call numbers out and when calls were made to fan out, they seemed to fall on deaf ears as defenders were sucked needlessly into defending at the ruck. Something to be worked on.
Mary's had a vastly experienced team, they kept us in our own half for large portions of the game, kicking to Milky at 15 and putting him under severe pressure with an organised chase following every high ball. The exception was a 10 minute spell close to the end when we were camped on their 5m line and put a lot of strain on their defences only to hand the ball back to them when someone (I didn't see who) was penalised for going over the top of a ruck. Naturally, Mary's cleared their lines and punished us with a very quick try from the resulting lineout when they spread the ball wide with lightning speed.
There's no denying that everyone who came onto the pitch played their skins off, few left the pitch without some form of a knock and most had shed blood for the cause, none moreso than Mark. The subs, when they came on, played very well, most notably Luke, also returning from long absence, who with his first carry ripped through their lines and slipped 5 tackles before being felled by one of their wings. Ger Cregan stepped up and scrummaged well against former Leinster tighthead Peter Coyle.
Ross O'D marshalled the troops well, Dave, playing at 8 made crucial tackles and carried the ball into contact rarely failing to make ground. Great work too by Tom Hayes and Liam, neither jump in lineouts on a regular basis, but did well to win most of our lineouts under the conditions.
I think it's fair to say that the display was a hallmark of a team who is unfamiliar with each other, but hopefully that can be corrected before the next J5 game on Tuesday week. It certainly doesn't help when 15 minutes before kick off, the forwards are still walking through some lineouts and the backs through some patterns. On the plus side, discipline was very good, and we couldn't have asked for much from the Ref, who by and large made good calls. Only grumble might be that he could/should have sent off one of Mary's centers for a foot trip on Milky early in the first half otherwise, certainly one of the better refereeing displays I've seen this season.
Hopefully we can use the next 3 training sessions to pick up everything we need to.
Sorry it's neither detailed nor positive, but I guess the J5s are on a steep learning curve. We know what's needed for the next game, so I'm looking forward to a much better performance in the Fortress.
For the Parish,
Match report by Mike Kirwan