| 14/02/2010 | 12.30pm | Pennant League | St. Marys U21s 2nd XV | 3 – 24 | UCD | Home |
The Pennant side played at home this weekend. Just before kick off we lost two of our players to the premier side due to illness.
From the start UCD put us under a lot of pressure as they had a much heavier pack. From as early as the fifth minute of the match they converted their first penalty to take a 3 – 0 lead. From the kick off it didnt get any better as they pinned us back in our twenty two where me started to miss tackle after tackle and let UCD cross the line for an easy try which they converted to take a 10 – 0 lead . Five minutes later we conceded another easy try which they converted bringing the score to 17 – 0. We started to put pressure on the UCD pack they turned us over at the half way line and ran in another try and converted it to lead 24 – 0. Finally after 35 minutes we entered into the UCD 22 and were awarded a penalty which we narroly missed. Whistle blew for half time.
A good team talk from Chops and some positional changes at half time seem to work wonders. From the kick off we tore into UCD pack and as a result of the play from the Pennant side they conceded a penalty which Ciaran Murphy converted 24 – 3. The pack started to win good line out ball and our backs tried to break through the UCD defence without any luck. After keeping UCD pinned to their goal line for the last 20 minutes we tried every move to get over the goal line but narrowly failed every time. With about ten minutes to go UCD had a player sent off for headbutting. We opted to kick for the corner and take the line out and again we tried to cross the line but we failed to due to a very stubborn UCD defence. (The lads would claim we won the second half 3 – 0!) A gutsy second half performance from the team. The score did not accurately reflect the second half performance by Marys.
Thanks to Ritchie, Chops and Max Ebbs for their help on the day.
JACK EBBS