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Nilled at Irish again

Injured
By Leipziger September 25 2007
On Sunday the Falcons were nilled for only the second time in the Premiership, at the same ground and by a remarkably similar scoreline to the last time. A 19-0 defeat at the Madjeski Stadium brought us all back down to earth after the brilliant win against Sale a week earlier.

Although making only four changes to the side, John Fletcher was without last week’s man of the match Toby Flood, who was sitting in a stand in France, and the injured Mark Mayerhofler, and new midfield men Steve Jones and Tom Dillon were unable to make much use of the meagre ball they received all game.  Only some mammoth defending prevented a cricket score.

 

Irish were on the scoresheet after only minutes with Jeremy Staunton kicking a penalty, although he also missed one in the early stages, and their dominance soon told when a huge gap opened up in our centre area for an attacker to skip through, and from this run Faan Rautenbach scored on the left for the opening try.

 

We were dealt a blow when Ben Woods had to be taken off with a hand injury and a further penalty from Staunton took the Exiles 11 points ahead, before Paul Hodgson chipped forward into the corner and nudged the defender out of his stride to run in unopposed for another try, which again Staunton couldn’t convert.

 

The Falcons finally made it onto the attack at the very end of the first half, winning a penalty in the 22 which was sent into the corner, as happened to a second penalty from the resulting play.  However, the lineout was overthrown and the chance gone.

 

In the first quarter of an hour of the second half we showed more attacking spirit, and had a decent spill despite the introduction of Andy Long making little difference to our lineout, but even bringing on all the rest of our replacements could not help us penetrate Irish’s 22 often enough.

 

Actually, little of note happened in the second half apart from Dillon’s yellow card and the resulting penalty kicked by Staunton to complete the scoring at 19-0.  Low on confidence and still without a point, the Falcons could not manage to get any sort of rhythm going and Irish played out the rest of the game in the tight.

 

Interestingly, at full-time, the whole Falcons team came onto the pitch to clap their fans, something I don’t think I’ve seen before after a defeat.  Hopefully they were worried about getting a rollicking in the dressing room.  If so at least one person was taking notice, afterwards outside of the ground Geoff Parling looked absolutely heartbroken.

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