Captains & Ref
Ouch, Ouch and Ouch again.
Today we saw the difference between a team of serious professional players and monetary backing including a squad with four Leinster players and three academy squad members and a team of amateur rugby players who work or go to college during the day.
Bruff started excellently piling on the pressure and attacking the Lansdowne pack and back three, and after twenty minutes seemed to have settled in very well having taken a 6 point lead following two Brian Cahill penalties. Things were looking good. The Cahill brothers were among the many bruff players cutting into the opposition with some savage scything tackles, we were making ground around the fringes and through the middle.
All of a sudden things just went pear shaped. For fifteen minutes, Stephen Keogh seemed to spend his time playing as an extra back from the lineout setups and even though Bruff’s scrum was excellent throughout the day, it just wasn’t enough of a dam to stand against the wave after wave of attacking that seemed to wash over them.
Aidan McCullen ran in their first try on 32 minutes, Healy missing the conversion to bring them with in a point of Bruff, two minutes later they ran in try number 2 and Gerraghty converting to go 12 -6 ahead. A binning and the replacement of the outhalf and time was up and we all were praying for the whistle to allow the lads to regroup, then in injury time two more converted tries were like kicks in the gut and Lansdowne had the bonus point in the bag before the break.
And it was about to get worse.
Before the binning was reversed we were two further converted tries down, hands on head time.
Bruff to be fair, rallied and started to come back into the game. Even though you knew that it was far too little, far too late. They didn’t go down without a fight and despite knocking on over the line costing one try , they managed to get a consolation score by scrapping right to the end. Two binnings near the end of the game and Lansdowne managed to run in two more tries.
Now we know what shellshocked feels like.