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DONEGAL 3 - 10 STRABANE | Mon 27th Mar 2006 | | TEAM :
davy fin, bob, les, eddie, bap, gordy, cricky, john g, timmy, maxi, stuarty, paul, mowbs, rossi and housty
A quick comparrison with the team that played donegal at lifford road earlier in the season will show you how much has changed this year for strabane rfc, but the game itself was the typical slog it always is down there. the rain began to fall just before kick off, and any hopes of deploying our running game were just about finished. the narrow pitch combined with a ball slipperier than mcmenamin on one of his non-drinking nights and a tenacious home defence meant that scoring opportunities would be rarer than bap passing a burger van and not purchasing.
the first half was scoreless, with us missing 2 penalties and them 1. the big donegal pack was giving us no change in the scrums, but our lineouts were working well, and one rolling maul took us 30 metres up the pitch.
the tir connell men were living on scraps and only looked dangerous when one of our attacks broke down and the ball was kicked through. on this score our covering defence was excellent, with paul and mowbs setting up great platforms for the retreating troops. the drift defences were on top and try as we might we couldn't break through, with the last pass just failing to be collected in the difficult conditions. on a brighter note, our midfield defence was tighter than scrooge on an economy drive, exemplified by macca's "eye" tackle on the donegal 10 .
midway through the second half we eventually troubled the ref's scorecard when simon maxwell kicked a penalty to give us a deserved lead, but the donegal men never give in and they raised themselves again and had their best period of pressure. my arm then seemed to think the reds needed a bit of help and i started picking out their jumpers with pin-point accuracy and they were eventually awarded a difficult penalty on their left on the 22, 10 yards in from the touchline. their kicker did well to take a very tricky chance on his wrong side, and with 5 minutes to play the score was 3-3.
it was now that we played our best rugby, and after some quick recycling of 2 phases, maxi received a pass on the 22 with 3 men and not much room to make the corner. having been keeping up with "road-runner - beep-beep" mcknight for the last few games his pace has increased and he burned the cover defence for an excellent score in the corner. there were rumours that he had to resort to "ACME" TM rockets, like old wylie coyote but the smoke trail was explained afterwards by his indulgence in a particularly hot vindaloo on friday night. he then calmly slotted the most difficult kick of the day from the right touchline to leave us relatively safe at 3 - 10. we ground down the 2 minutes on the clock without any further alarms and we were very glad to be leaving the seaside with half a ton of the pitch, a few pints and most importantly 2 points .
we are now 4 points clear of randalstown in second place with the same number of games played and 22 more points scored. we have the difficult visit to ballyshannon this saturday, where they will no doubt be wanting revenge for the 2 defeats we gave them this season already, followed by virginia at home on the 15th of april. |
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