You always start the morning of a game feeling nervous but when it’s a must win game you can’t stand still and you know your team mates feel the same when everyone is up surprisingly early.
We line up ready to receive, the ref blows his whistle game underway, As always this season we get off to a sluggish start giving away an early penalty right in front of the posts Clontarf 3 up, we are slow to support in the rucks getting turned over .Clontarf come at us again making their way back towards our touch line. Another penalty right in front of the posts Clontarf 6 -0 up and getting the feeling it was going to be a long day.
We kicked off and Clontarf come at us again building up a head of steam our forwards lead by are talismanic props Keith & James making hard tackles, Clontarf get a yellow at our 10 meter line some breathing space. We make our way back towards the Clontarf half our number 9 Ryan Barnes steering us all the way Rhino, Charlie keeping it amongst the forwards to make good ground, Then you hear our 10 Cal Gray shouting out at the top of his lungs obviously had enough of the forwards having the ball , He gets the ball and with a hop skip and a jump he is gone weaving his way past several Clontarf players making his way over the try line with a great individual Try and then converting the conversion that followed 7-6 to the boys in blue.
With it getting closer to half time we had them under pressure again we pushed our way forward with good runs from James Collery and James Casey breaking the gain line we find ourselves inside the 22 metre line, Number 10 Cal Gray gets a sniff of the post and bang drop goal right between the posts 10-6 to Mary’s Clontarf now back to 15 they come at us there number 7 making great runs splitting our defence and they get over for a try 10-13 to Clontarf,
The second half gets underway with the introduction of Saban, Dixon, John Whelan & Barry Norman, We went right at them pushing them back, at their 10 metre line we get a penalty and with a brilliant tap and go from Saban and passed to none other than our very own sponsor Mr fox over for the try and again converted by Cal Gray 17-13 to Mary’s. We find ourselves staying in the Clontarf half another penalty to Mary’s and right between the post by our 10. 22-13 to Mary’s our coaching staff tell us to watch out now Clontarf are about to throw the kitchen sink at us and they did bullied their way back to get a try 22-18 to the star. Finding ourselves under pressure with 15 mins left we absorbed the pressure from Clontarf every player 1-15 putting in the hits disrupting Clontarf not letting them build up any momentum. We turning it over 2 mins to go and slowly work our way back into their half we get a penalty ref says last play, man of the match Cal slots it over like he has done all day surely a call up Ireland squad is pending after that performance.