06.02.2020 St Marys College J1s V Belvedere RFC

St Mary’s College RFC J1 V Old Belvedere RFC

50 7

Metro League 2

Templeville Road

Thursday 6th February 2020

Overall

As the score indicates, clearly this was a comprehensive win for the home side. In fairness to Belvedere, they never gave up or shied from work; they contested with all they had, right to the end. It also must be recognised that this was a Belvedere J2 team.

The home side had the appearance of an impressively strong team, with a high quality backline. It is therefore ironic that only one of Marys’ tries came from a backline movement. There were in fact, a number of attractive looking moves, all being unfortunately somewhat meretricious. There is no doubt but the desire and talent is there and all will fall into place, but meantime, inexperience of playing together led to very many errors and lateral running. The forwards did carry the provisions as they marched forward with dominant set pieces and loose play. And it was they who supplied the remainder of the tries. Sean Healy, at hooker, will have been very happy, having scored a hat trick. Fellow front rower and strong carrier, Podge Dundon (he is always happy) scored one and Jamie Coolican, on in the backrow, scored the last of the evening. Ruairi Shields converted six of the seven tries and a penalty.In the pack Liam Curran once again strove all game and led the defensive duty with unerring and frequent tackling. Dan Lyons too showed his worth. He goes about his business actively looking for work and he never stops from first to last whistle; he scored the first try. It was mentioned before, that this J1 team has true spirit, camaraderie and pride and the players will develop in time.

The pace of the game was good and the referee played his part in keeping play flowing in a fair and enjoyable manner. After eight minutes of evenly fought rugby, Dan got over, close in at the Cabbage Patch end. On 30 minutes it was Podge’s turn, 14-0. Belvo struck back two minutes later, with a well worked converted try. 14-7. That ended the scoring for the half.

The second half was six minutes old, 46 minutes, when following a ruck Sean broke loose and scored the first of his trio of tries. 21-7, then, Ruairi converted a penalty, 24-7. Sean scored his second from a maul on 63 minutes 29-7. Then following a fine break by Tim McMahon, Ruairi showed his pace and whizzed in from 40 metres out, 36-7, Sean added his last on 76 minutes, 43-7 and on 79 minutes, Jamie Coolican drove over bringing the final score to 50-7.

Unfortunately Jack Dilger had only come on a short time when he got a knock and had to retire. It was better news to see Darren Moroney come on for a good part of the second half and get some air in his lungs and ball in his hands.

D O’Brien.

Team

15 R Shields, 14 M Opperman, 13 T McMahon, 12 M Timmons (Capt), 11 A Dix, 10 B Watson, 9 C Kavanagh, 8 D Lyons, 7 C Corcoran, 6, G Potts, 5 H Diepman, 4 L Curran, 3 P Dundon, 2 S Healy, 1 B Mannion. J Coolican C O’Neill, J Dilger, T Dolan, D Moroney.