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Strabane II 7 - Rainey O.B. IV 19 | Tue 31st Jan 2006 | | Team:- L Twaddell, W McCarter, G Branigan, A.J. Miller, L Edgar, S Thompson, W Hunter, J Kee, C Wilson, C Johnston, A Brown, D Patrick, D Warnock, S Campbell, D Miller. and no subs.
The second string welcomed back old familiar faces following retirement, suspension and laziness, and though i do say so myself, i think myself, Winston and Craig added to the occasion.
In near perfect conditions Strabane elected to kick towards the town end of the ground, hoping to pin the heavier Rainey pack upfield. This worked well as our forwards started in disruptive fashion which enabled the rather youthful looking Strabane backline to run at every opportunity. And though the passing wasn't always of the very highest standard we certainly can't be faulted for ambition, ohhh no.
After a good period of Strabane pressure, the usual thing happened, the opposition scored a breakaway try after a simple pick up at the base of the scrum from their flanker. The gulpen than ran fully half the pitch with scarsely a hand laid on him, though he was very fast and slippery. Score 7 - 0 to the Rainey. Again Strabane responded well, putting together a few good phases of possession which allowed our new out-half (who had been playing golf with me in the morning when i received the call-up and was also told to bring his boots) to show his pace in attack. Unfortunately Hunter's suspension has had a rather adverse affect on his match fitness as after only 5 mins his hamstring ceased up. Worse was to follow however when his back row partner Stuart Thompson came of second best after a tackle on the aforementioned gulpen of a flanker and was forced to retreat to the left wing position. Thankfully David Patrick bedded down adequately at blind-side flanker for the remainder of the game.
Strabane started the second half in determined fashion and produced again some good rugby, however further injury was to hit the Tyrone side as Soupy caught and unfortunate finger to his eye, which shortly afterwards closed up. Our full-back seeing 2 balls coming towards him out of the sky is not good news, but he struggled on well and along with the rest of the backs took it straight back to Rainey at every opportunity. Then after good pressure by our backline on the Rainey outhalf at scrum time we forced an error which allowed Craig to kick ahead and win the race upfield to touch down under the posts for a converted try. Game on.
However. however, however just as we clawed our way back into the game, we fcuked up at the restart. Somebody picked up and went infield without support after scrappy ball, Lee then got pinged for holding on, we failed to retreat 10 metres, then nobody tackled some fatboy as he waltzed over the line at the quickly taken tap. True a lack of tackling was to blame but we should never have ended up in that field position in the first place. Anyway, we rallied and again Craig showed good ability at mixing it up with clever kicks behind Rainey or good short passes to set our backs up on attack.
Mr clamity was to appear again however, as, and i'm not sure how to describe this, but our 2 centres namely messers Warnock and Miller seemed to get confused with the Rainey dummy runners as they attcked on our 22. One can only assume that failing to pick the actual ball carrier out, both Strabane centres decide to tackle eachother, and high at that, resulting in 2 nasty cuts, and much claret behind the Strabane line. For the record, Rainey took advantage of the confusion in the Strabane ranks and scored another converted try.
With Davey and David requiring medical assistance, Soupy a new eyeball, Winston an entire refit and with Stuart Thompson still in a bit of a daze, the correct decision was taken to blow up early, (17mins by the way). A score of 19 - 7 to Rainey certainly is nothing to be ashamed of as the 15 who took the field on saturday gave their all and on the say so of the opposition and assembled supportes, played some very good and improved rugby. |
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