25.09.2010 J4 XV v Tallaght (A)

25/09/20102:30pmFTallaght19 – 22St. Marys J4 XVAway

St Marys J4 V Tallaght
22 – 19

The match was slightly delayed because of Tallaght being late out of the dressing room. Straight away the extra few pre season games for Tallaght seemed to show. It took Marys a while to get into the game and after 15 minutes of consistent pressure on our line we started making headway. From a scrum 10 yards out it came to the right with a perfectly timed pass from centre Darragh O’Neill drawing two players in the process gave fullback Paul Whyte the first try of the new season. Unfortunately Teddy couldn’t convert and it was 5-0. After a few minutes of broken play Tallaght’s centre broke through the line and after getting through a few tackles scored under the posts and it was 5-7. With a clearance kick Ted took there fullback out and in the process dazed himself, the referee awarded them a penalty saying that he hadn’t made an effort to wrap his arms around the player. Ted had to go off because of the tackle and the backline had to reshuffle to accommodate Richard Pyne. They ended up missing the penalty and so it went in 5-7 at half time.

The second half couldn’t have started better. Ted restarted the game, it was retrieved and was spread wide to Paul “Wally” Moran who went on crash and barged through around six of them scoring within the first minute. Ted converted 12-7. Because of rolling subs Ted had been able to return to play and we were down to the bare bones on the bench after Alan “Boom Boom” Godfrey had been brought on for an injured Eamon Moran. With injury’s happening every few minutes we had a makeshift pack with Chi Yuen playing in his old position of flanker. They put on the pressure and after a maul off a line-out scored and converted making it 12-14. They then broke through our line of defence again and with offload from there first centre to second the second centre went over just wide of the posts. The kicker could not convert. 12-19 with 13 men on the Marys side because of a blood injury to captain Phil Conway. With the restart from Teddy, Eamon “Peanut” Moran back on for injured Kenny McArdle made a massive hit on the catcher and the tempo changed for us. After some pressure it came out to the right wing again and O’Neill held his man till the last second just like the first try, putting winger Nick Cunningham to convert from 10m out. Teddy converted making it 19 all. From a massive clearance kick by Teddy the full back tipped it and after winger placed it down thinking it would be a 22 to them the referee ruled it was a 5m scrum to us. With more pressure form us Ross Wynne passed it back to Ted who got the drop goal making it 22-19. It looked like it would end all square when they were awarded a penalty 25m out in front of the posts. The kicker hit the post and falling to Godfrey he kicked it as hard as he could over the posts thus ending the game.

We kick off our league campaign against Parkmore next week and this hard fought victory will hopefully stand to us.

Team:
1. Ross Kelly 2. Eamon Moran 3. Muiris Stacks 4. John Twomey 5. Kenny McArdle 6. Seb Conway 7. Niall Conway 8. Phil Conway(c) 9. Ross Wynne 10. Brian Moran 11. Chi Yuen Hui 12.Paul Moran 13. Darragh O’Neill 14. Nick Cunningham 15. Paul Whyte

Subs:
Richard Pyne, Alan Godfrey