Fox Cup match report Wanderers v Clontarf
15/04/2009
After this teams great win over Carlow in the final of the Vets competition two weeks ago in St. Marys the lads were full of confidence for this match against Clontarf last night. Don't let the score deceive you, this was a very hard, well contested game between two well organized and drilled teams both hungry for victory. It saddens me to have to report that the players made very hard work of it and the win, was more down to the management skills of Joe Mcdermot and Paddy Dowling who bemused and confused the opposition with their strategical substitutions. Our backs however ran in a number of tries twelve I believe, our place kicker Mr. BradleyMerrin converted only eleven of these and has been duly reprimanded for his miss his excuse been that the crescendo of noise from the unruly crowd of Clonratf supporters club affected his preparation. This is of course no excuse and the selection committee will consider this. Our centers were again slow in all aspects of their play even if they did score seven tries, and were poor in defence and had it not been for the quickness of Mr. Jim Doddy and his timely tackles his match count was three ( Joe Mac said one of those was where he fell on one the Clontarl players) we would have been in trouble. Our Captain Mr. Lional Mahon playing somewhere in the backs was inspirational in his verbal directions to the team. Mr. Dermot Finnegan ( full back) was superb when he came into the line, that is when he found which line to run on. In our pack we welcomed the return of Mr. Dennis O'Flynn who with a couple of months hard training might just make it. Our star forward was not as you might expect Mr. Nial Culletton ( not a patch on his brother Brian ) or Joe Leonard, James Kenny, Tom Magee, Paul Whelan, Jim Doddy or Dominic Kearney but was Mr. Nial Darby who when ALL 6' 10 inches of Tom Magee had to come off at the start of the second half who else but all 5' nothing of Mr.Nial Darby replaced him in the second row He towered above all and won numerous line outs so much so that clontarf had to continuously change their play to avoid him. However the lack of fitness of our team began to show and in an act of kindness the referee ( Mr.Alan Roland ) blew the match up with 12 mins still to play. None the less Joe McDermot and Paddy Dowling will meet with the selectors this week and see if any thing can be done to select an improved team for the Semi Final against Old Belvedere to be played in Old belvedere on Thursday the 16th of April at 7.30pm. Tickets available from ticket master preference will be given to those who attended the quarter final last night. On a more serious note their is a rumor that we the selection committee declined the offer from Mickey Mac to play in this team and where as we were grateful for his kind offer we after great soul searching decided that in keeping with the tradition our Wanderers we would continue to develop our younger players and decided to stick with Paddy Kenny even though we recognized the experience and skill Mickey Mac would have brought to the team.
