Junior Rugby

Leinster  Junior Development Shield Final 2013

Tullamore College Deprived of Historic School Double

Having already won the Senior Development Shield, Tullamore College were deprived of a historic double when their junior team were beatebn 15-5 by Enniscorthy CBS in windswept Athy.

Tullamore went into the final feeling reasonably confident as eight of the Junior Team were on the successful senior team.

Tullamore won the toss and elected to play against a strong wind in the first half. Tullamore started very well and they put a lot of pressure on Ennniscorthy early in the first half. They wasted two very good try scoring opportunities when they dropped the ball with the line at their mercy.

From a breakdown in one of the Tullamore attacks Enniscorthy kicked a long high ball down the field. Tullamore knocked the ball on under their own posts. From the resultant scrum, Enniscorthy were awarded a penalty which they duly kicked to put them 3-0. From the restart Tullamore again put on alot of pressure. An Enniscorthy player dropped the ball and centre Clint Horan picked it up and burst through the Enniscorthy defence to score a great try. Conor Dunne missed the difficult conversion.

Towards the end of the first half Tullamore dropped a high kick and Enniscorthy worked their way inside the Tullamore 22. Some very bad defending allowed Enniscorty in for a try and their out half converted  to make it 10-5 at half time. This lead did not seem insurmountable as Tullamore would be playing with the benefit of a strong wind in the second half.

Tullamore started brightly but were taking a lot of wrong options. They didn’t really use the wind very well. A few times they did kick the ball it was returned with interest by the Enniscorthy back three. Tullamore seemed to tire early in the second half. This was probably due to the fact that several of their players were asked to play Gaelic Football League matches the evening before.  Instead of Tullamore taking over like they did in previous matches it was Enniscorthy who started to dominate and it was no surprise that they scored a try just before the finish to make it 15-5.

They comfortably held on until the end to spoil the party for Tullamore College.

Two first year students Killian Keenan and Eoin Martin who played in the front row were not out of their depth playing against older opponents. They were well supported by Cian Byrne.  Jake Naughton was outstanding in the line out while Kevin Keenahan, Eric Murtagh, Barry Bracken and  Steven Pyke all worked very hard. Cian Fogarty supplied good ball for the backs but on the day nothing seemed to go right for the back line. Conor Dunne, Dylan Hyland, Brian Ryan, Clint Horan, John Tobin and Shane Tierney all had been outstanding in all the games up to the final. The rest of the panel was made up of Adam Kelly, Aaron Mc Kenna, Aaron Coyne, Jack Dooley, Jack Delaney, Andrew Healion, James Keogh, Gavin Murphy and Patrick Mc Guire.