Hindsight is always 20-20 they say. But in a season that has both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day on Saturdays, not to mention the seemingly endless weeks of unprecedented December snow, it proved to be impossible task for Match & Fixture Secretary Frank Porter and other Donaghadee RFC club officials to plan a balanced schedule of rugby matches since November. Yes, that’s November 2010. It may well be the season of “Happy New Year”, but the players at Donaldson Park had built up a healthy head of steam up to their enforced break with seven successive league wins, and are now fighting frustration as they try hard at training to remember all the skills, tactics and strategies that had become second nature up to the enforced break.
Of course the same is true for so many outdoor winter sports apart from skiing etc. but keeping up the enthusiasm and ensuring that the torch of success stays lit when the players have to be reminded each training evening just what a rugby football behaves like is an unforeseen task for the coaches Jimmie McCoy and Andy Monson. It is now fairly certain (we still don’t know what the weather will do) that the rugby-free break will be an almost unbelievable seven weeks since the First XV’s last league game.
The vagaries of the mid-winter weather did interfere with the launch of the 125th Anniversary commemorative brochure, although it only became available on Boxing Day instead of the planned day a week earlier. These are now on sale in all the usual outlets in Donaghadee, bangor and Newtownards or at the Donaldson Park premises when open.
Also on Boxing Day, a delightful occasion by the way, the winners of the Christmas ballot were announced. These were
First Prize: F. Humphreys
Second Prize: G. Boyce
Third Prize: D. Malcolm
Fourth Prize: G. Millar
Fifth Prize: A. Boyd
For Your Diary this week
Weather permitting, and how many more times this season will it be necessary to use that phrase, the long-postponed league game in Omagh is planned for Saturday 15 January. The Second XV players, who have been almost as frustrated as their colleagues, now have a re-scheduled game against CIYMS at Donaldson Park on the 8th of January and the Thirds have a game against Civil Service at Stormont on the same date. But, especially in January, we must heed the words of Robbie Burns, especially at this time of the year, “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley.” For all players training continues at the usual times and dates.
A Guid NewYear to all those who follow the fortunes of the men in red and green.
