Clondalkin U19s got their season up and running against Naas away on a very warm day last Saturday. Naas are habitually in the Premier league at this level & last season put more than 50 points on Clondalkin. However, the game on Saturday was a very good tightly fought contest wherein a young Clondalkin squad were more than willing to put in many excellent hard hitting tackles, and take the game to the opposition with many fine passages of play, all the more commendable given that this was the first match of the season for both teams.
Entering the last 10 minutes the score was still only 5 – 0 to the home team from an early first half try after Clon failed to clear a good kick ahead into the corner by Naas. Naas rather fortuitously got the score out to 15-0 at the very end. At this stage Clon had also missed 2 penalty chances with one hitting the post. Such misses prevented much of Clon’s good attacking play getting any reward & applying the always critical score board pressure on the opposition.
Clon made numerous clean line breaks in both halves, most notably by the inventive & looping running of Thomas Ankers & the deceptive direct lines of Julian Crous, with captain Josh Dunne often providing the well disguised link plays. Up front the forwards also had many big carries from Craig Black, Aaron Donnelly, Dardar & Lennain Williams among others but not forgetting the good sneaky one by James Murphy, which came to nothing because the trail support runner never materialised. Sweet soft offloads often kept plays going. The Naas penalty count, particularly in the third quarter when Clon really got on top, possibly warranted stiffer sanction from an otherwise excellent referee.
The Clon defensive tackles were often brave and sometimes brilliant with one Ross Breacom corner flagging try saver near the end outstanding. Everyone tackled manfully but were ably lead by wing forwards Jamie Kelly & Donnelly. It was a pity we don’t have “tackles made stats” from the game. While the forwards had a huge tackle count, there is a chance the backs had as many completed tackles where our midfield was very solid with one thunderous hit in the centre by Josh Dunne being as pleasing as those by the likes of Josh Worrell, James Farrell & Kevin Kelly on rumbling forwards who appeared almost twice their size.
Clon’s biggest issue on the day was at scrum time whereby the Naas Irish youths tight head applied a lot of pressure to the Clon scrum, but the Clon props certainly didn’t give up or shirk the fight. Clon did win the lineout battle with Craig Black & Jamie Kelly being well lifted to apply lots of pressure on the Naas throw which resulted in 4 or 5 turnovers – so one all in the set piece contests.
While Clon willingly threw on all of their healthy 22 man squad (despite missing at least 6 others) and early, it was noticeable that the older Naas team, despite starting with only 1 player u18 or younger, were very reluctant to give all their 25 players game time. The significant crowd thoroughly enjoyed what was skilful & committed fare from both teams. It was pleasing for the Clon coaches to hear comments from the Naas Director of Rugby & the referee, as well as some parents, state that they certainly felt Clondalkin deserved more than zero on the scoreboard & perhaps Naas didn’t deserve 15!
Team: Darren Murphy, Dardar Madden, Adam Gleeson; Lennain Williams, Adam Murray; Aaron Donnelly, Jamie Kelly, Craig Black; Jonny Flanagan, Thomas Ankers; Patrick Adeyele, Josh Dunne, Julian Crous, Kevin Kelly; Ross Breacom. Rotated subs: Mikey Warner, Kevin Williamson, Luke Roberts, James Murphy, Josh Worrell, James Farrell, Thomas Duffy.
(Thanks to Rob Hayes for report).
