The best of both worlds

Skerries 1st XV v Connemara, 1st March, 2003 in Connemara

Connemara 22
Skerries 22

Occasionally we hear of people who, breaking the habit of a lifetime, forsake the great game of rugby football and opt, instead, to spend their Saturday afternoons in the tranquillity of the Irish countryside. Well, from now on they don’t have to make the choice. They can do both. If you sit on the traditional stone wall down at the Monastery field outside Clifden you can, first of all, share in the cut and thrust of the match and have your fill of vicarious drama. Then you swivel through a hundred and eighty degrees, plug your ears and voila! You are straightaway into idyllic mode, your eyes feasting on rare pastoral pleasures. You have the best of both worlds. Two for the price of one.

If, however, matches continue to be of the quality that we saw on Saturday the likelihood is that the scenery will be relegated to the small print. Both sides played with the insouciance that comes from being comfortably located in mid-table but that didn’t mean that the tempo was gentle. Au contraire. The commitment was relentlessly intense. Five times the lead changed hands before the initial parity was regained in the 81st minute. It was a game which had everything. Except a winner and a loser. On the day the caudine forks were superfluous – neither side was obliged to pass submissively beneath them.

Finishing on level terms was a fitting finale to an amicable first pilgrimage to outer Connemara. If wife-swapping can be seen as a remedy for bored domesticity, town-swapping might be the perfect antidote to geographical monotony. Skerries transported itself virtually en bloc to the western seaboard from as early as Thursday and all Goats spoke in euphoric terms of the smoothness of the operation. Or almost all. There was one spectacular exception. The Senior Vice-President has an uncanny knack of gravitating to the nearest disaster and on Friday he became, in the long history of Skerries travelling support, the first man to have to vacate his room in order to accommodate a wake.

Connemara played arguably the finest rugby seen at Holmpatrick last season and they lost no time on Saturday in reminding the visitors of their highly executive style. Purpose and pace make up an irresistible tandem but the Goats to their great credit did resist and KEANE, C struck a penalty in the 17th minute to neutralise an earlier dropped goal from home out-half KING. A superbly orchestrated maul from the line-out on the opposition 22 then gave Skerries the lead for the first time. The effervescent GRIMES accepted the plaudits and the sympathy was reserved for KEANE as his conversion kick was repelled by a post. Skerries were soon again under near-chronic pressure but outstanding defence, notably from EARLY,WALSH and BUTLER, limited the damage to a brace of penalty goals before the break.

Fortunes fluctuated again early in the second half and, predictably, KEANE, D was the catalyst. Espionage is rife in rugby to-day even at 3rd division level and it is fair to assume that KEANE’S qualities as a finisher were already well-known on the edge of the Atlantic. But, like so many before them, the All-Black defenders were powerless to call a halt. KEANE, in a previous incarnation, was without doubt one of those Roman chariots, the ones with the big blades rotating on the wheels which dismember anyone straying onto their route and he left the usual trail of victims in his wake as he powered his way inexorably to the corner. KEANE, C converted with a magnificent kick which danced on the crossbar before deciding to go over.

The impressively healthy All-Black maul had been repeatedly denied in the first half but now 16 minutes into the second moiety it exacted its due. KEANEY, the captain, was in possession at the dénouement and he was credited with a try which KING converted. 7 minutes later the Goats fell into deeper arrears when the excellent KING kicked a third penalty. Skerries were still unwilling to concede and, as if to apologise for being four months late, SHEERAN raced on to add his considerable talent to the effort, the versatile KEANE, C reverting to full-back. KEANE, D embarked once again on his party piece and his capitulation on the threshold of the line was the prelude to a whole series of frenzied forays. Five times the behemoths of the old gold cerise and blue pack perished on the All-Black rocks and there was a touch of irony in seeing a considerably less substantial goat, right-wing CARAHER, finally breaching the defensive phalanx. KEANE’S conversion meant that Skerries had three points to spare as the game entered injury time. But KING came centre-stage again to balance the accounts with a final penalty.

Skerries have now lost only one of their last 7 All-Ireland matches, two wins and a draw decorating both sides of the caning at Shaws Bridge and the team is largely unrecognisable from the one which accepted, without demur, an earlier chastisement in Banbridge. KEANES D and C hog the headlines but around them are players whose share prices have increased significantly in the post-Christmas quotations. Should the campaign begin then for the canonisation of the coach? If Heaney has not yet got a miracle in his portfolio, he has certainly got a very good cure.

Evolution of score: 3-0, 3-3, 3-8, 6-8, 9-8, h-t, 9-15, 16-15, 19-15,19-22, 22-22.