Workhorse wrote:TrapperChamonix wrote:Some change in fortune all right. They had been in a bad run of form since the middle of January including loosing to all the teams they beat in the McCorry Cup. I think everyone would have had Lansdowne as firm favorites. Remember they only lost the Fraser McMullen SF in extra time.
So well done Terenure great come back to finish the season. Was there change in personal? Injured players returning? Or did it just take most of the season for them to click?
JP Fanagan
8th Feb Terenure 19 - 23 Blackrock
15th Mar Terenure 10 - 22 DUFC
24th Mar Lansdowne 35 - 7 Terenure
McCorry Cup
31st Mar DUFC 12 - 23 Terenure
14th April Blackrock 13 - 18 Terenure
1st May Lansdowne 15 - 19 Terenure
Went to the game and was talking to a few Terenure people who I guess were parents but apparently there was a lot of factors, a few injuries after Christmas helped mean they were out of the running for top 4 in the league but not in danger of finishing below 5th so no real incentive in the league which also allowed them to try things in their remaining games which I guess didn't work by the results. The team was also pretty much completely from the school so I'd say the cup focus that would bring played a part. Terenure also weren't too happy with a couple of things around the scheduling of the match which added to their intensity. They just seemed to take more of a cup final approach to the game than Lansdowne in general which showed in their performance. The crowd being pretty heavily Terenure didn't hurt them I guess.
All of the above, plus a really smart Coaching and Execution performance. Particularly in the second-half, as the Terenure players grew in belief against a team that had carved them up in the League, the Terenure team just deprived Lansdowne of the ball and maintained possesion themselves, by playing in areas of the pitch where they had support for the ball carrier.
If you were a neutral, it was a really good coaching clinic, which demonstrated very well that rugby is a team game in which the collective can nearly always overcome Individual size and skill, if they play to what they know and can execute.
AFAIK, the Terenure coaches were winning their third McCorry Cup in four or five years. Given how competitive this competition is and the reality that almost every team starts with a new group each year, this is a superb coaching acheivement given that Terenure are not ever over-endowed with representative players. In fact, even for this final, their centre Adam Lagrue, who spent most of the Season with their Senior side, was withdrawn at the request of the Irish U.20 Management as he is in contention to replace the injured Irish U.20 captain, David Hawkshaw, for the Junior World Cup in Argentina.
