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Intermediate Primes
Skerries 1st XV v Ballina, 6th December, 2003 at Holmpatrick Skerries 33 On every stage of the Tour de France there are intermediate primes or bonuses to reward the leaders at certain designated hot spots. Now, if rugby had something like that, or if referees simply had the good sense to terminate all matches at half-time, Skerries would by now be preening themselves at the top of the Third Division table. The wind which routinely buffets this country has contributed much to that mathematically exact invention the game of two halves. But Skerries frequently compound the issue by their perverse habit of knocking off work well in advance of closing time. The sea-siders achieved parity with league leadersInstonians and Banbridge….but only for 40 minutes. Against Naas the Goats had constructed a substantial lead at the break….but were within a whisker of being reined in at the end. Again, on Saturday, a 20 point advantage all but evaporated during a torrid quarter hour in the second half. BRASSINGTON will this week be instructing his charges not to leave the kitchen before the opposition goose is cooked. The Skerries team, of course, is like their clubhouse, undergoing radical reconstruction. And while alterations are in progress, certain inconveniences are inevitable. Nowhere has the messy site-work been more apparent than in the crucially important area of the half-backs. Since the season began, the selectorial JCB's have been busily shifting players around without any obvious reference to an overall blueprint. The evidence of Saturday is that they have, at last, hit upon a cohesive rugby-playing partnership at 9 and 10. DENNY has eminently flexible wrists which allow him to whip the ball away without recourse to his legs and SHEERAN adjusted readily to the idea of running fast and early to meet the pass. The result was an immediate rise in the try expectancy level of the outside backs. DENNY is a scion of the high-octane wing three-quarter of the seventies P C Denny ( for those who take an interest in Sporting trivia the P stands for Pimpernel) and he possesses all the paternal inventiveness but without the sometimes fatal addiction to extravagance. SHEERAN looks thoroughly comfortable in the role of runner or distributor. But his curiously inhibited kicking style accords far too much clemency to the oval. The fact that it's shaped like an egg doesn't mean it's fragile. Injury has condemned O'SULLIVAN DEREK to chronic exile from senior rugby but he wasted no time in celebrating his return on Saturday. His try in the left corner on 12 minutes was an advance dividend from mid-field fluency and , added to SHEERAN'S earlier penalty, it put the home support in buoyant mood. But Skerries were soon in serious shock as opposing full-back NEWMAN found an unsuspected extra gear which took him clear of the defense and across the try-line. Ballina were following the text-book recommendations to the letter by keeping the ball in hand against the breeze but their enthusiasm tended to overflow and SHEERAN kicked a punitive penalty. BEGGS is normally a high achiever when it comes to absenteeism but he compensates by turning up when least expected. He it was who claimed the try in the vanguard of a concerted forward drive on 34 minutes. Then, on the verge of the half-time truce DENNY sparked a sumptuous score. Sniping down a congested blindside he saw the ball safely back to BUTLER and the athletic no. 6 accelerated away to the promised land. O'NEILL who had taken over the kicking duties struck a post with the conversion but Skerries advantage at the break (21-5) was still a salubrious one. After the ritual sucking of oranges - or has that simple pleasure been replaced by a more contemporary form of refuelling - centre LONIGAN reduced the visiting deficit with a penalty. The riposte of Lord Holmpatrick's men was swift - the Ballina line was under siege for some minutes before leviathan second-row DOWLING scored with an irresistible drive. Have you ever wondered why rugby teams don't have an offical formation as soccer teams do? In the association game we are used to seeing mention of 4-5-1 or 4-4-2. During the brief coaching span of Ossie Ardiles we even had an infinitely more sporting formation of 4-3-3. Rugby teams, I suppose, were traditionally 1-4-2-8 but these days the more favoured alignment is 1-11. And if you are wondering to the other three players, they're the three who spend the entire match in an offside position and are thus, as the French term it, hors jeu. Ballina are amonst the most devoted followers of the new configuration but when a couple of intrepid local aficionados took it upon themselves to point this out to the Westerners as they regrouped behind the posts in the wake of DOWLING's try they were met with repeated salvoes of barbed abuse. O'NEILL's conversion did little to induce détente. It all boded ill for the focus of the visitors but, to their great credit they dredged up a spirited resurgence. Tries by LLOYD and BRADY both converted by LONIGAN presaged a harrowing finale for the Old Gold, Cerise and Blue. With 10 minutes to play, however, a diminished Ballina pack (CARRABINE had been invited to take a seat on the touchline) coughed up a ball on it's own line and BUTLER was quickest to react. Everyday contains these brief moments between light and dark which the poets refer to as the gloaming. For the romantics it is a hallowed time. For the car-drivers it is a hazardous time. For the myopic rugby player it is time to boycott the ball. EARLY overlooked these simple details when, in an élan of generosity, he offered a late second try to his accomplice O'SULLIVAN only to see it spurned. Or was the winger simply pondering the cost of a ring? Man of the Match awards are coming to resemble World Boxing Titles with various jurisdictions issuing their verdicts. DENNY was the choice in the dressing-room. BUTLER got the vote in the Sunday journals. Both deserve the plaudits. As do all the team for a worthy performance. But all praise should be accompanied by a warning: Beware the All-Blacks.
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