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.