Clontarf tame Con at Castle Ave.
Author: Peter Walsh
2005-12-12
Clontarf 24 Cork Constitution 17

Last week in Buccs Clontarf suffered the indignity of conceding a try within 5 minutes of the start. On Saturday in Castle Ave they served the bitter pill to Con by putting 5 points on the board within a minute. Con kicked off and the Tarf pack scored a try....thanks very much.

From that point the game was frenetic with thrust and counterthrust the order of the day . The Clontarf pack was magnificent and drove the league leaders back at will with tight head 'chops Sweeney' in particularily rampaging form. In fact the home side could feel a little aggrieved that the referees lack of positioning sense denied them a number of legitimate scores. Tarf clearly scored three tries that were not given because the ref, making his AIL debut, was struggling with the pace of the game. This did not impact on the result but it did deny 'Tarf a bonus point and it delivered one to Con which could have a serious impact on league position at season end. Outside the rampaging pack the backline defended aggressively with Pete O'Brien making some serious hits on his old friends. At scrum half Fiach O'Loughlin had some hairy moments. Clearly the Con backrow decided to target the 'Tarf 9 which led to some heart stopping pursuits. Fiach had the last laugh with a timely interception on the 'Tar f line which relieved serious pressure when a Con score looked on. For the record ,the tarf scorers were tries from Carson, Ellison and McDonald with a conversion and two pens from O'Shea.

Next up is the AIB Cup versus Dungannon at Castle Ave on Sat 17th KO 2.00pm

P.S. As you will have noticed there are now two people currently writing match reports for the website. I have recently been upbraided by my 'colleague' who covers the J1 games for 'not accentuating the positive' in my match reports. I have decided that the value of a match report is that it reports the facts as closely as they can be remembered after a good lunch and that dressing up the articles with happy clappy fluffy frivolities is not for me. David O'Sugarcane clearly feels differently;................... thats why he is writing for the J1's!!

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