Lansdowne
6 Stillorgan 3, Ballycorus Rd. 07/11/2009
Champagne
Rugby
They
say a week is a long time in politics and sport....
In
a reversal of fortune remenisciant of a phoenix rising from the ashes
of the week beforehand, The killer bs dropped into 'down and dirty'
mode to grind out a valuable win against a well drilled, well organised
Stillorgan team who felt that Lansdowne were there for the taking. If
what we lacked against AIB was character, then redemption was swift
and dramatic for many Lansdowne players on saturday.
This was never going to be the kind of match that would turn on a moment
of brilliance, both teams were too acutely aware of what was at stake.
Ironically, perhaps our problem has been over-reliance on individual
acts of heroism, but after that performance, a true team was born...
From prop to fullback no quarter was given from either side, aggressive
defense from the pack was mixed with good ball carrying, again Rob Moore
marshalling things well on that front. Conor 'The Rabbi' Gahan made
himself available and put himself in harms way more than anyone else
and got man of the match by doing it the hard way. Andrew Tracey injected
pace into the game off the bench and caught the eye, and Kav 'Tight
T-shirts only' managed to not get sent off, which is nice. Conor 'shirt
lifter' O'Sullivan sniped and varied his game well, best performance
in a while spud... Gants bombed the stillorgan back three like the Jerrys
bombed the chip shops of east london during the blitz, forcing them
to counter all day. Ross 'Hit em high' Bloomfield snaffled out any midfield
attacks, and Oisin obviously bought a new watch as he was remarkably
early this week. Justin Comer is rapidly becoming a complete fullback
and varied between kick and counter effectively. The wings did not get
it all their own way but stuck to task and worked hard for the team.
All in all a valuable lesson was learned: Rugby is not always about
scoring tries and winning (or losing) by 50 points. An old munster coach
used to say " hold them off for 75 minutes, get a penalty and win
3 nil, a win is a win."
I think we can take from the performance on saturday the knowledge that
pressure and territory are sometimes more important things to fight
for than points...that being said it must be noted that if stillorgans
kicker had brought the right boots on saturday this report, right or
wrong, would sound a little different. We must clean up the penalty
count guys, its killing us...
The
wagon is rolling again folks, lets build on this great, if unspectacular
victory and be more than the sum of our parts.
Man
of the match: Conor 'The Rabbi' Gahan
written
by Philip McGoldrick
photos
by Gabriel Portier
Team
1:
Peter Geoghegan 2: Brian Gahan 3: Chris Reid (c) 4: Paul Harvey 5: Robert
Moore 6: Conor Gahan 7: Adam Kavanagh 8: Ed Bruce 9: Conor O'Sullivan
10: Eoin Gantly 11: Rory Gavin 12: Ross Bloomfield 13: Oisin 14: Millan
Alonso 15: Justin Comer Subs: Andrew Tracy, Dan Logan, Enda Kilkullen,
Simon B and Mark Forrest.
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