In what was one of the coldest nights of the year, UCD took to the pitch on Monday night against a Barnhall team who have been one of their bogey teams over the years.
Barnhall were sitting two points behind UCD in the league so the students were going to have to impress in order to retain their position at the perch.
Collidge started brightly with good work in the tight from Mike O’Sullivan and Liam Hyland once they overcame their considerable language barriers – friends for over two years, the seminal moment was when Liam discovered that Mike was in fact calling him his chum, rather than a chump. “They were simply semantics which had never bypassed my considerable lexicon” said Liam after the match in between hang sangwiches.
After good work from UCD they edged onto the scoreboard with a fine try, finished off by Peter Condon Captain Peter Condon, as he has compelled everyone to call him. Simon Gillespie missed the conversion.
Gillespie was obviously watching his soccer counterparts Sligo rovers FC as he too made no mistake with a penalty, which brought the scoreboard to 8-0 UCD.
Collidege’s second try came from an excellent pick up from Luke Hickey who burst through a gap and popped off to Jambo Hayes (seen here) – the final passage of play seen Eoghan Conron and Captain Peewee combine well to bring the scores to 11-0, conversion was missed. Hayes was excellent in the line-out all evening, “they put me up, put me down, put my feet back on the ground, put me up put me down and made him happy” said a jubilant Hayes after the match.
Half time scores 11-0
The next score came straight from TV drama, when Phil Mitchell Lookalike Mike Cawley intercepted a stray pass, with a combination of skill, timing and shouting “oi Peggy” the more handsome of the two brothers pounced on the ball and fed it to substitute Cailbhe Doherty, Gillespie added the extras this time courtesy of the crossbar – Billy Murphy was at the point seen scampering away as quickly as possible as Gillespie’s celebrations, believing he has just won €25,000, forced him to re-read the small print of the conditions of the previous week.
Mark Jennings was once again in flying form as he made a wonderful snake-like break to set up Peewee Condon through, in what looked like a scene from the Borrowers several Barnhall players looked around in bemusement as they could hear but could not see the tiny Peewee Condon. A few of the substitute carried well to speed up the tempo, keelan McKenna broke a tackle and offloaded to Lar McKenna, no relation, Lar McKenna stepped the next defender and popped back to Kellan McKenna, still no relation, and Robbie Fromage took the ball into contact. Eventually the ball came to Cailbhe Doherty again who with lots of work to do managed to sidestep three players in close proximity and squeeze in for his first score.
Terry Jones was effective throughout the match and with the help of Eoghan Conron and Dave Gibbons managed to break through on numerous occasions, helping to bring the play well into the Barnhall half.
Notices
- Cailbhe Doherty would like to thank Dublin Zoo who let him in for free this week, he said he had a lovely time and they raised awareness for the plight of the orangatan.
- This week’s winner of the crossword was Ger Moran who won a weeks supply for physio, which was worth approximately €5,000 (to him).
- Congratulations to Kieran Moloney who won the photo competition this week for his selection of photographs in Terenure school grounds.