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RANDALSTOWN 16 - 10 STRABANE | Tue 31st Jan 2006 | | team : mal, bob, davy, bert, eddie, cricky, gordy, john g, maxi, paul, rossi, bap, brian, housty and mowbs.
the old randalstown bogey has struck again; a case of missed opportunities and a few costly mistakes have put a dampener on our title aspirations.
the game started with continual pressure from ourselves and we spent most of the first period camped in their half, but a combination of good defence and a lack of penetration meant that coming up to half time the score was 3-0. the pack was definitely on top, with a slight advantage in the scrum and our 4 man lineouts were working well and we were able to disrupt randalstown's own, much vaunted line. we worked hard to make space and eventually housty went over in the corner, but unfortunately thought the dead ball line was the try line and the shouts to stop were ignored and he very nearly landed in the river - or would have done if we could have caught him .
the ref then awarded a penalty to us and housty made some ammends with a good kick to level the scores, but it doesn't take a banker to tell you that 5 is better than 3. we went back down again and eventually had a lineout on their 5 metre line and we called a move that involved the two pods splitting and cricky steaming up the middle, which worked well and cricky drove his tackler over and placed the ball down for what looked like a genuine score, but the ref gave a 22, which i can't fathom?
this was all for nothing as from another attack we dropped the ball, which was hacked through, but never fear, our fullback mowbrayburger was in perfect position to clean up the mess. his textbook dive onto the ball was interrupted by the smell of a passing chip van, and with his mind on his belly he tried to catch the ball with his love handles. normally this would result in the ball being squashed into the soft randalstown pitch, but a combination of the recent dry spell and valerie's taking over of the food budget meant it shot out towards our goalline . still no need to panic, our speedsters rossi, housty and maxi were covering their prop-like centre, but they were so busy trying not to get in each others way they failed to get in his way either and the bugger scored , with a conversion awarded, that missed by at least a foot, to rub salt into the wound ( we can't complain too much when we don't bring our own touch-judge ).
straight after that the ref blew for half time and we were none too happy with the situation, but things were to get worse straight after the break when 2 quickfire penalties by the homesters made it 16 -3 ( the culprits being john g and yours truly - but both were highly debateable ) and randalstown really had their tails up at this stage. they even had another attempt ruled out that looked to be good, so things even themselves up ok. we seem to go to sleep early in the second half of games, and our coach thinks this is due to a lack of fitness, but i think it's more a mental problem - we need a good kick up the arse. we eventually got into gear but we found it hard to get into their half until the last 10 minutes and we applied some good pressure and john graham got over but was pinged for a double movement, which i didn't see. as the clock wound down we came again and after john nearly got carried over again, the ball was recycled quickly and the ball was flashed out right for mowbs to go over unopposed. the conversion was slotted by housty, but the ref immediately blew the whistle and that was that. |
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