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VIRGINIA 10 - 21 STRABANE | Sat 08th Oct 2005 | | teamsheet 1. fawcett 2. bob 3. colin finlay 4. bert 5. nigel 6. eddy 7. cricky 8. mitchy 9. maxi 10. brian 11. bap 12. mowbs 13. gilsy 14. ross 15. housty
the annual trip to cavan saw a strong side take an early bus south, with 3 changes from last week -mal working, paul tied up and soupy on international duty . with a good warm up we immediately went on the offensive, and from our kick off, put virginia under severe pressure. we attacked their line and were working slowly forwards, with at least 8 phases of possession, when i looked up from a ruck to see their rangy winger galloping down the field to score. a wild pass apparently had been intercepted, but i didn't see who it was - luckily everyone else told me later it was brian .
we had a long way to go back to the posts to see the conversion fail and from the restart worse was to befall us. maxi and i went to tackle the same player, and i sprained my ankle. play was halted to patch me up but all i could do for the rest of the match was hobble from scrum to line-out - not much of a change there then i hear you cry .the team did really well to carry me for the rest of the match, and when you consider that at the end we had lost james for 10 minutes with injury and bap for 2 minutes with a late tackle, we were severely stretched.
virginia definitely had us on the ropes early on, but we stuck to our guns and our stronger game eventually paid off with a score very similar to last week's, with maxi scoring off an initial burst by mitchy. there were threats later in the evening that mitchy will not be releasing the ball to maxi again unless he sets him up for a few scores. housty converted and we took a lead we were never to lose. continual pressure saw virginia constantly infringing at rucks and housty made them pay with 3 well taken penalties.
brian repaid us handsomely with a dazzling break up the blindside off the back of a scrum. he took a sweet pass from maxi and carved throuh the defence and drew the last man to put housty in for the final score of the game.
to be fair to virginia, they always came back at us and took a well worked try mid-way through the second half, but we again dominated at scrum and lineout with the rolling maul doing a lot of damage, yet clearing out at rucks is still a problem and the backs will feel they can do better also. i feel that if we play as we can we should be able to demolish some teams, but if we are as complacent as we were at times on saturday, we will come off the rails at places like ballyshannon, antrim and more pressingly, cookstown. perhaps we had this game won in our heads beforehand or maybe we have the confidence to just do enough to win?
as skipper for the day i would like to thank all the team for turning out for me, especially colin and bap, who got late calls, but it was great to see them both playing so well. also james for stepping in to prop against a formidable opponent and mitchy for leading the pack, even with his own injury.
the afters will certainly be better recalled by someone who was able to play the version of the drinking game we used on saturday night, but i must mention cricky " abducted by aliens " hamilton who will be placed on the young offenders register and will have to wear a homing tag on all future tours . |
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