UCD U20 B 20 – 17 Newbridge RFC
Sunday October 19th 2008, venue Newbridge.
The under 20 pennant side recorded their second consecutive league win with a hard fought match in atrocious conditions in Rosetown yesterday afternoon; this was a very good win for Collidge as Newbridge are one of the strongest teams in the league this year.
The tactics for the first half were dictated by the elements as Collidge played into the Gale & driving rain for the first forty minutes. The students deliberately kept the ball close in and anytime we did move it wide (why we tried to do this remains a mystery) it invariably broke down and Newbridge were able to apply more pressure onto the students. The forwards were at the forefront of the first half efforts and the backrow of Darrell Quinn, Richie Whelan and Maurice Deasy deserve a special mention for their efforts. When we managed to advance up the pitch our poor discipline would mean we found ourselves right back in our twenty two and we were fortunate that the Newbridge out half missed a number of penalty kicks and that we only found ourselves three points down approaching half time. Unfortunately just before half time we lost the ball in midfield and a kick through by Newbridge was well finished by their out half who was successful with the conversion thus moving the score to ten nil at half time.
Thankfully Collidge started the second half strongly and began playing down in Newbridge territory. The students were soon on the board thanks to try scored by Robbie Field after a strong run from Darrell Quinn and a lovely offload to Field who managed to touchdown under the posts. O’Brien was successful with the conversion and Collidge had cut the lead to three points. Collidge were soon ahead thanks to a try by centre David Fahy who benefited from the strong running of his forwards and the sharp delivery of replacement scrum half Shane O’Meara. The conversion was missed but a subsequent penalty from Ross increased the students lead to five points. Collidge continued to play down in the Newbridge 22 and the home side were soon penalised for an off the ball incident, thinking that UCD would kick to touch Newbridge turned their backs on play and seeing this Robbie Field took a quick tap and bulldozed his way over despite the best efforts of the Newbridge scrum half.
This took the lead to ten points as Collidge lead twenty points to ten. Naturally the home side upped their game and they soon had UCD under pressure, Collidge held firm but when the home out half ran behind two dummy runners and was not penalised for crossing/obstruction (?) UCD were penalised at the next breakdown. They attempted to take a quick penalty but were repelled by Field who was judged to have done so illegally and was dispatched to the sin bin. Newbridge took a scrum and after a number of phases they created an overlap on the shortside , despite the best efforts of James Finnegan and Shane O’Meara the Newbridge player managed to touch down (or did he – it looked as if he had been rolled onto his back) and with the conversion it was now a three point game.
Thankfully Collidge were able to see out the remaining few minutes to secure a hard fought but well deserved victory. The whole squad deserves credit for this victory and it would not be fair to single any one player out, the players gladly hit the showers to avoid the early stages of hypothermia which had begun to set it.
One memory of the match that will live long in the memory is of loose head prop Kieran Finlayson beating the Newbridge defensive line and then seeing a “vast open space” (as quoted by KF himself) and the look of panic………There are some things money can't buy. For everything else there's Mastercard!!
Next up is a home match against St Marys on Sunday November 2nd – all support welcome.