Working on a Dream
By Big-Al
August 31 2010
A long trip up north for our last pre-season fixture, the crowd news is that there are more of us than the 8 who had declared during the week on the message board.
August 31 2010
A long trip up north for our last pre-season fixture, the crowd news is that there are more of us than the 8 who had declared during the week on the message board.
The team news – we have a strong looking starting 15 – and it is certainly good to see Seilala starting, even though 11 replacements are listed (Edinburgh have 14 – but strangely no number 24 – is 24 unlucky in Scotland?) there are a few names missing in addition to the known injuries – no Tom, no Nick.
Edinburgh kick off the first half – we are playing from right to left. There is not too much of note in the early exchanges, Edinburgh have more possession and territory but are not looking dangerous – for those who had been commenting during the week about our loss of number 8s, at the first scrum it was Ryan filling that role – problem solved.
Our first move of note was a good break by Delon that took him well into the Edinburgh 22 – but the support is not quite up with him and possession is lost.
Edinburgh opened the scoring – and good break by Mike Blair, finds Chris Paterson who avoids a challenge or 2 to cross for the first try, but his conversion attempt hits the post, so it is Edinburgh 5, Irish 0 after 11 minutes.
The pattern of the game continued much as before, with Edinburgh having more possession and territory, but generally not looking too dangerous – while we made a couple of decent looking breaks. One such break on the half hour is started by Ryan and I think Maps and Declan are also involved before the ball is fed out to Topsy to score our opening try and level the scores. A straight forward conversion from in front of the posts and Ryan gives us a 7-5 lead.
An Irish penalty on half way leads to a line out on the Edinburgh 22 and following a few phases from the forwards we get another penalty, again we go for the corner and now have a line out about 6m out. Marland breaks off from the resulting maul to score our second try and Ryan again add the extras – a 14-5 lead for Irish – the score remains unchanged for the couple of minutes remaining until half time.
So a good first half, Edinburgh may have had more possession, but we did a lot more with what we had. Maps certainly looked up for it, putting in few big hits and always looking for an opportunity to break.
On to the second half – and most of my notes seem to be an attempt to keep track of the many replacements – there was only 1 change for Irish at half time, Dan replacing Elvis, but Edinburgh made far too many changes to attempt to record (possibly all 14 of them).
In the early stages of the second half we seem to have more possession then we did in the first, but nothing comes from it.
7 mins in and David and Faan replace James and Alex.
After 10 minutes it starts raining – this is significant as it has been commented that Dan has yet to have any dry weather experience in this country (it also allows me to use a pre-written possible closing comment I came up with after seeing the weather forecast early in the week – “With all the wet weather practice we’ve had, if it’s dry and sunny on Saturday, we’re stuffed” – probably not worth saving it until the end). We seem to like the rain, from a line out in the Edinburgh 22 the ball is fed to the backs and quickly across to Topsy, but he is forced into touch as he tried to round the last defender. The next replacement is JJ for Maps – and this is where it starts getting difficult as I tend to write down the numbers, which I can later translate into names from the team-sheet – so it can be confusing when 12 replaces 12
14 minutes in and Ryan converts a penalty to extend our lead to 17-5 and the rain has stopped.
On the hour mark Edinburgh score their second try – after one of those messy phases where possessions changes hands a few times, Edinburgh put a couple of passes together and score in the corner through Lee Jones – the try is converted from fairly wide out by David Blair, so our lead is reduced to 17-12.
Further replacements are made and the numbers I have written down don’t seem to match those listed on the team-sheet – Darren replaces Dodge, Delon and Kieran also came off, but from the numbers they were replaced by Dan (but he was already on) and Gary (but he is to come on later).
Edinburgh are currently dominating play, but we are defending comfortably.
For the next round of replacements the numbers work this time – Max, Matt and Chris are on – replacing Clarke, Ryan and George.
The last replacement is Gary (the man with no number) for Bob – (so I can check back and identify the unknown replacements from earlier as being James Gibson and Jamie Lennard).
Edinburgh continue to put us under pressure and after a number of phases they score in the far corner, Lee Jones is the scorer again – so the scores are level. David Blair again converts from even wider out than last time, so it is Edinburgh who lead by 19-17.
We are unable to respond in the remaining few minutes, so the final score is Edinburgh 19, London Irish 17.
We seemed in control in the early parts of the second half, but things became a little disjointed as large numbers of replacements were used – Edinburgh’s tactic of making most of their changes at half time was maybe less disruptive.
Edinburgh did out score us 3 tries to 2 and were successful with 2 difficult conversions, so probably just about deserved to edge it.
So pre-season is over – 2 wins, 1 defeat and reaching the final of the Middlesex 7s – all fit players have had some game time – so hopefully we are now all set and we can look forward to the next 9 months with the sense of anticipation that greets the start of every new season. Currently all teams are equal – we all have it all to play for. Our dream is to win some silverware – Toby and the coaching team, along with all the playing squad will have been working on this dream for the past couple of months, our part is to cheer the team on through this seasons adventures starting on Saturday – and with a lot of hard work, some good planning, a lot of cheering and a bit of luck, who’s to say it wont be our dream that comes true come the end of the season.
Come on IRISH!!!!
Disclaimer: Individuals’ dreams may vary from those described above. Big-Al takes no responsibility for dreams that do not come true. .
Bookmark or share this story with:
Digg
Delicious
Facebook
Reddit
StumbleuponWorking on a Dream
Posted by: The Craic www.londonirish.org (IP Logged)
Date: 31/08/2010 11:02
What do you think? You can have your say by posting below.
If you do not already have an account Click here to Register.
If you do not already have an account Click here to Register.
Re: Working on a Dream
Posted by: ulster tom (IP Logged)
Date: 31/08/2010 12:28
Nice work Big-Al.
A great match report.
Thank you.
A great match report.
Thank you.
Re: Working on a Dream
Posted by: b.q.f.m (IP Logged)
Date: 31/08/2010 18:12
Great report, not sure what Mr Springsteen would think about you pinching his title though!!!
Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.
