Didn't scare us!

A spokesman said, "We just tried to treat this as any normal game. We feel that it is important when travelling to places like Gloucester not to be distracted".

Waving cheerily to the Cherry and White hoards, the squad arrived at the ground with the tonsils nicely warmed by renditions of ‘The Fields’ and ‘Molly Malone’, washed down with Mulled Wine Marie’s Medicinal Hot Chocolate.

The pre-match analysis got off to a dodgy start when Griff suggested that there was only one outcome to the match. However he could not specify what that was. His reign as the Academy’s Mystic Meg was therefore brief.

After this the analysis concentrated on whether Goodliffe was worse than Maybank, and wondering where Rodrigo Roncero’s neck had gone.

As the Academy numbers grew, the sound of drums could be heard inside and outside the ground, calling to each other like Mastodons across a primordial swamp (though actually the pitch was in remarkably good nick). Soon it was time for the build up to begin in earnest. ‘The Fields’ ‘Molly Malone’ and ‘ I’d rather be a farmer than a Quin’ rang out across Kingsholm as the squad knuckled down to their task. Superb.

And so to the match. The opening exchanges were even. Gloucester pressure in the London Irish was ended by a penalty against Azam for not releasing and a further penalty at the first scrum saw Irish kick to within 15 metres of the Gloucester line.

Following the lineout the ball was fed to Barry who delivered a cross-field kick into acres of space on the Gloucester left. With Paul Sackey sprinting unopposed towards the ball as it bounced behind the Gloucester try line, the Irish were poised to take an early lead. Instead the ball showed it was a ‘homer’ by bouncing agonisingly away from Paul’s outstretched fingers and into ‘touch in goal’. Irish’s enterprise and vision deserved better.

The next few minutes saw a period of Gloucester pressure resulting in the Doc being penalised for coming in at the side of a ruck, 5 metres from the Irish line.

The penalty was kicked to touch. From the line out, Gloucester’s rolling maul was initially held, but twisted to allow Jake Boer to crash over the line. Mercier duly converted and with 15 minutes played it was 7 – 0 to the home side.

Straight from the kick off, Gloucester were penalised for leading with the elbow and Barry dispatched the penalty from wide on the Irish right. 7 – 3.

Although Gloucester were receiving an increasing share of the ball, particularly from line outs, their attacks were being met by a strong and committed defence. However from one of these attacks Irish were penalised for offside, leaving Monsieur Mercier with the simple task of collecting another 3 points. 10 –3 with 20 minutes gone.

And then a remarkable thing happened! 25 minutes into the game James Forrester has the ball for Gloucester as they attack the centre of the park. The Doc lines him up – and misses the tackle!!! But hurtling across were other defenders and the danger was cleared.

It was remarkable enough that the Doc missed a tackle, but what the incident showed more than anything was that this team has got back to the mind set that sees every threat to their try line as a collective insult.

By this stage it was becoming clear that Glaws had been doing their homework at the line outs, throwing long to take Kennedy out of the game, and out-muscling him on Irish’s throw. For the first time in 3 games we were losing our own line outs and not having much success in disrupting theirs.

Glaws now applied a lot of ‘lateral pressure’ (ie lots of possession going across the pitch) but everywhere they went they came across a superb and committed Irish defence. In turn, when Irish had the ball, they showed they could match Gloucester in driving forward play, and in keeping the ball moving in hand. The last 20 minutes of the half was therefore a ding-dong battle between two hugely committed sides.

During this period Fred Gustard picked up a nasty looking neck/shoulder injury and was replaced by James C*ckle.

The half ended with a quite superb piece of defensive play from the Doc. He collected a full-blown hospital pass from Darren 10 metres from, and facing towards, his own try line. He not only stayed on his feet and held onto the ball with 3 Gloucester players climbing all over him, but also managed to get the ball back to Barry to clear. Awesome.

Half time: Glaws 10 Oirish 3

The ding-dong battle was rejoined, though by now Gloucester had decided that their best option was to exploit the advantage they enjoyed in the rolling maul.

During one such maul Goodliffe awarded a penalty against Irish for pulling it down, even though the maul itself was still on its feet and proceeding merrily along about 15 metres downfield from the alleged offence.

Mercier kicked the penalty to touch and from the resulting lineout another maul began its progress up and across the pitch. Eventually Irish ran out of defenders leaving Junior Paramore to fall over the line for the second try of the match. Mercier missed the conversion to leave the score Glaws 15 Oirish 3 with 10 minutes gone in the second half.

However by now it was clear that the Irish team of last year has returned. 30 seconds after conceding this try, the Irish forwards (with Beefy now on for Wurzle) were steam-rollering the Gloucester pack backwards into their twenty-two. Glaws collapsed the maul, Barry kicked to touch 5 metres out and the Academy choir roared their support.

Unfortunately, in a pattern that was to be repeated later, the line out ball was lost and Glaws cleared. Soon after a limping Simon Halford was replaced by Rob Hardwick.

The game continued as before, committed attacks from both sides being met by resolute defence. It was at about this stage that I think Gloucester began to realise that this Irish side was not going to fade away. In every part of the pitch they found Irish players in their faces, or driving at, round or through them with ball in hand.

After a sustained period of in-your-face pressure, Irish forced a turnover in the Gloucester 22 leading to a yellow card to Azam for deliberately killing the ball. Barry slotted the penalty from in front of the posts and we were back to 15 – 6.

Mercier then launched a huge hanging kick-off and by the time gravity eventually reasserted itself, Mike Horak found he had 3 Gloucester playmates with him who also wanted the ball. He was penalised for not releasing and Mercier dispatched the 3 points. 18 – 6.

Again Irish came back at Glaws. Nick Burrows recovered the ball from the re-start while Gloucester dithered. The ball was fed left, then recycled back to the right through about 5 pairs of hands for Paul Sackey to squeeze in at the corner. Barry kicked a superb touchline conversion and suddenly it was 18 – 13 with Gloucester were looking distinctly nervous.

With 10 minutes left to play Azam returned to the field and Gloucester immediately launched another huge rolling maul from inside their own half. Eventually Maybank decided that wearing a Green shirt in a maul was a penalty offence and Mercier kicked to touch10 metres from the Irish line.

Now came the big talking point of the game. From the line out Glaws drove right. Finding no joy there they then crabbed 15 metres to the left. Again the Irish defence held firm. As the maul disintegrated around them, the Glaws forwards again moved right before grinding to a halt and putting the ball to ground short of the Irish line. As Gommersal retrieved the ball from the ruck, he was collared by C*ckle. The referee then signalled a penalty try.

Now I confess that I was at the other end of the ground and so was not as well positioned as the ref. However from where I was it was clear that (a) the rolling maul had ended and the ball was on the ground and (b) there were Irish defenders between Gommersall and the try-line. The reason for giving the penalty try was therefore presumably that the offside offence prevented Gommersall from feeding the ball to one of the Gloucester backs, who was certain to score.

Mmmm. So the referee was certain that Gommersall would have retrieved the ball from the ruck without error, passed it without being tackled and the receiving player would have been able to beat the Irish cover defence.

Now whether that is right or not is up to the referee’s judgement. However, Goodliffe does seem to have a tendency to ref by numbers (witness the Bristol game). I have a concern that, given Gloucester’s two previous tries, he was anticipating that the only way Irish could stop a try was by committing an offence at the maul. Rather than stopping to consider whether a genuine try-scoring opportunity had actually been denied by the offence that took place after the maul had stopped, he awarded a penalty try because he was expecting to have to award one.

Anyway, Mercier converts and Gloucester lead 25 – 13.

With 8 minutes remaining Nick Kennedy, who had clearly earned a name for himself with our opponents, was replaced by Glenn Delaney.

The next few moments were amazing. From a Gloucester scrum 5 metres into the Irish half the ball somehow found its way into Paul Sackey’s hands. From 50 metres out he blasted past, through and round the Gloucester defence for a quite superb solo try. Barry kicked another excellent conversion and it was game on at 25 –20.

By now Paddy 69 was singing ‘The Fields’ with a vocal pitch somewhere just the soprano side of castrati. The rest of the troops struggled heroically to move from bass to tenor to try to keep him company.

Suitably inspired Irish roared at Gloucester, forcing them to defend desperately in their own 22. Again the inability to secure line out ball proved costly, with promising positions lost through turnovers.

Despite never having been in front, it was Irish that were now on the front foot. The concern in the Gloucester team and the crowd was palpable and the Craic Academy raised their efforts even further. Unfortunately neither the team nor the Academy was able to turn their efforts into points.

There was just time to see a flash of a distinctly quick looking Mr Garvey before Mr Goodliffe decided enough was enough.

And so the game ended 25 –20 after about 4 minutes stoppage time. Not that Mr Goodliffe let his time go to waste. He was still able to keep the crowd entertained with his interesting and varied interpretations of what did and did not constitute a turned scrum.

So what does the post match summary look like?

1) Castle Grim is an excellent place to go. A thoroughly enjoyable day (apart from the result).

2) You can see our team improving game by game. Apart from the serious weakness against rolling mauls, our defence was awesome. However we also saw yesterday a distinct improvement in our handling and running skills, and greater balance and judgement in our running and kicking games (though Barry had a poor game kicking from hand).

3) I thought the ball handling/retention by both sides was incredible, given the conditions. From Irish’s point of view, the contrast with the abject displays of ball handling against Bath and Sale makes it difficult to believe it is the same group of players.

4) Remarkably we left Kingsholm feeling that we could have won the game. Gloucester ultimately won the game through their maul and line out and through Mercier’s awesome kicks from hand. However, with a little more ‘heads-up’ play at the lineouts, and perhaps a little more benevolence from the gods of rugby we could have achieved the unthinkable.

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