Sat 12th Oct, 11:00am. Clogher Valley 38 – 10 Civil Service
Clogher too alert for sleepy Service by Michael Curran
A well organised Clogher Valley side were too sharp for the Civil Service Colts who took too long to get the excitement of the bus journey out of their system.
The beautiful surroundings of the Clogher Valley club on a lovely autumn morning was a great setting for the Colts first game on the road.
However it didn’t take long to see the Colts had left a lot of their good play at home.
Clogher Valley were more energetic and organised moving the ball swiftly between forwards and backs which resulted in three tries in the first 20 minutes.
Despite Service Colts dominating the scrums, which was a pleasing sight as this was their first time playing contested scrums, they were unable to break down the Clogher defence.
Clogher continued to pressurise the Service line scoring a further three tries in the second 20 minutes.
The embarrassment of being 38 points down was finally enough to rouse sleepy Service. Better efforts from the forwards and quicker ball to the backs saw winger Talimo Ali, playing his first ever match, race down the left wing to score.
This feat was repeated minutes later as Talimo showed his pace to cross the line for his second.
The Colts gained confidence from this and recognising the potential of using the wingers put Talimo free in the dying seconds of the match only for a super covering tackle from Clogher to bring the move and the match to an end.
A great game played in great spirit. Many thanks to Clogher Valley for their hospitality. And best wishes to their hooker who sustained a painful arm injury. We wish him well.
Sat 12th Oct, 11:00am. Clogher Valley 52 – 7 Civil Service
U17s learn hard lessons on the road by Philip Anderson
Today the guys had to get up early to be at the club for an 8:30 departure by coach to Clogher Valley. The kind hearted would say it took some time
fir them to wake on the pitch. The honest assessment would be they were well beaten by a big well drilled and efficient Clogher side who enjoyed playing attacking rugby and took advantage of our sloppy “tackling”.
To concede several early tries doesn’t put down a great marker. Thankfully we closed out the first half with a period of sustained pressure which saw Jack McDowell rewarded with a try and conversion to reduce the half-time deficit to 32-7.
The second half continued as the first had started, and was compounded by multiple injuries to see the final score 52-7.
We don’t usually nominate a man of the match, and it may seem odd to do so when so heavily beaten – but Connor Devenney played out of his skin and put in more tackles than the whole of the pack.
Pride expects a better performance next week, everyone doing their job and pulling their weight improves us as team – together we are stronger.
Special thanks to the parents who travelled and gave support. The kids owe you a much improved performance next week.
Sat 12th Oct, 2:30pm. Civil Service 0 – 18 Ophir
Depressing performance on an equally dull day.
There was nothing bright and airy in this top of the table clash when Service hosted Ophir at Stormont on Saturday. Great expectations from the touchline faithful soon turned to despair as the visitors displayed a very abrasive but fruitful brand of rugby with very little by way of response from the home side.
Within the first minute of the start, Service had conceded their first of many penalties on the day, just to the left of the uprights, which the Ophir kicker failed to convert. Moments later though, it was deja vu, only this time he made no mistake and the visitors went 3 – 0 up inside the first few minutes.
Service attempted to get into the game but were repelled by aggressive defenders who turned over ball and hammered their way back into the Service half with powerful ball carriers, who’s only intent was to smash Service defenders out of the way and gain as much ground as possible for their next phase.
An attempted cross field 22 restart by Service after a kick downfield was well fielded by Peter Hoskins, went straight into the hands of the Ophir left winger who raced up the touchline only to be bundled into touch at the last minute. A catch and drive on the far side by the visitors, was then rewarded with a well taken try, which went unconverted, but helped get their high hopes even higher as they increasingly dominated much of the play.
The game was halted for about 20 minutes when one of the Ophir props became unwell and had to be removed from the field of play by ambulance and conveyed to hospital. Everyone at Service extend their best wishes to the player and hope for a speedy recovery.
The game resumed and Ophir were eventually rewarded with another successful penalty going in at the break 11 points to nil.
Service were not firing on too many cylinders, where as Ophir, now down to 14 men and uncontested scrums were dictating most of what was taking place on the pitch.
The second half was similar to the first, with some good individual play by one or two of the hosts but not enough sustained continuity for it to bear any fruit and ball being carried back into the heavy traffic instead of being moved wide and stretching the defence. Some aimless kicks out of hand by Service, didn’t help and set the ‘cat amongst the pigeons’ with a little bit of infighting before order was quickly restored.
To make matters worse, if that were possible, Ophir was awarded a try late on after two successful charge downs but then a rather obvious knock-on, went unseen by the official. The conversion attempt was successful and Ophir had won the game 18 points to nil and stay top of the league.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom and the score line reflects that. Take off the knock-on try, and land the kickable kicks and all of a sudden things begin to take on a different perspective. Ophir deserved their win but are very beatable. Service though, took too long to get into their stride and only played a decent bit of rugby in the last 15 minutes when they went close to crossing the line on a couple of occasions with some good carries from Hamish Matheson, Brendan Smith, Moore Holmes, Chris Burns and Dan Cartland. Missing a couple of ‘kickable’ penalties, one in each half, didn’t help, but the whole team is going to have to change their mental approach and get this ‘rabbit caught in the headlights’ syndrome out of their system, if they intend to mount a serious challenge to the league title.
Thanks to Ophir for travelling, the match official, the touchline faithful, Martina for some great photos, Ciaran the medic and NIAS for their quick response to an injured player.
Next week Service travel to Larne in the Gordon West Cup, nothing easy in this game!
Team:- Brendan Smith, Jonny Cartwright, Trevor McDowell, Ben Morgan, Michael Murray (c), Matthew Robinson, Moore Holmes, Hamish Matheson, Alastair Montgomery, George Brown, Dan Cartland, Chris Burns, Conor Kerr, Emmett McKimm and Peter Hoskins.
Sat 12th Oct, 2:30pm. Civil Service 2 0 – 50 Malone 4
Improvement for Service but fitness and injury take their toll by Brinley Sturgeon
Service improve but a good first half defensive effort is wasted by a second half drop
Despite a disappointing scoreline Service can take a lot of heart from the improvements from their previous outings as organisation and front-up tackling improved dramatically, however Malone’s fitness and game organisation finally proved the difference as they ran out clear winners
It was a perfect day for Rugby at The Pavilion, Stormont as both teams stepped on to the pitch, however within 3 minutes Services’ David Harris broke 3 bones in his hand in an innocuous challenge and had to be replaced by Niall Donnelly, disrupting all their plans for the lineouts. However they reorganised and Darren Rodgers, returning after a number of years away showed his experience, reducing the lineout to 4 man and not just getting his own ball but also disrupting the oppositions’.
The first half was a tough affair, much of the half spent in Service’s 22, but their defence had been much improved and the pack, organised by Paul Culbert were not shirking in the tackle. With Captain and former prop, Bryn Sturgeon moved into centre to pair Ryan Edgar the line held strong and Service were unfortunate to concede the first try as Malone were apparently held up. With the conversion missed the only other points came from the boot of their 10 who also added a penalty to give them an 8-0 lead, unfortunately Service also lost Simon Hoskins to injury when he held up another Malone attack on the line on the stroke of half time.
Service seemed buoyed by their defensive resilience in the first half and with Ciaran O’Reilly and Kanny Dane working well in tandem with fullback Steven Powell they had held out wave after wave of Malone offence, unfortunately with Glenn Kirkpatrick making his debut at prop and utility player, Robert Snodden, pressed into another game at hooker they lost the vast majority of the scrums and this gave the backs very little ball to work with, however Rab Warnock was a solid scrummager on the other side and Phil Patterson at 8 made a number of good line breaks and on a few occasions was able to release scrum half Steven Lawton who was unfortunate to not quite wriggle away for a score. With Conor McCabe playing his first game for the club making some good hits and Jonny Armstrong at out half tackling all round him Malone did well to work the ball round the strong close defence and worked a number of overlaps that they finished well. Matt Thompson came on for the last 15minutes for his debut but the game was well lost by that point. Service’s heads dropped after a few individual errors and Malone’s fitness told as they were able to run in many unanswered trys late in the second half to round of a comfortable win for them
Service Man of the Match: Darren Rodgers- did well in the lineout and made good tackles around the park
