Weekend 26th, 27th & 28th January 2008

AIB League

Bective 20, U. C. C. 20

J2 League

Bective 0, Greystones 49

J3 League

Bective  5, D. L. S. P. 20

J4 League

Stillorgan 13, Bective 5

 J3 League match report.

By Giles Barrett

First match of 2008 under lights took place in Donnybrook (back pitch) on the Jan 28th, as Bective's 3A's took on the table toppers DLSP. A decent crowd had gathered and Bective were hoping to carry forward their performance against Greystones recently. As the pre-match entertainment was cleared from the pitch, the two teams ran out between lots of pomp pomp girls and out onto the pitch, which was not in bad condition at all.

This game reminded me of Munster v. Leicester last year in Thomand Park. Bective 3A's were undefeated this season in Donnybrook, and I think we felt we just needed to turn up to take this one. Alas DLSP came out of the blocks extremely quickly, with some seriously powerful tackling and rucking. Bective were down a try within five minutes. With the last of the Christmas turkey definitely knocked out of us, Bective started to read the game better and some close in driving, started to make some serious progress. We camped on their line for the last ten minutes of the half, scorned 3 penalties in front of the posts in the search for tries. Alas, as what happened against Greystones, we lacked precision/guile in the last five yards. DLSP got a decidedly dodgy penalty to leave the half time score 9-0.

Half time the blazers came down from the stands. Messers Mick, Al & JC gave us their twopenceworth.

Second half and we focused on pick and drive and with some superb work from the forwards, drove over for a try, which was converted. 7-9. Then the most controversial decision from the blazers in a long time, as they decided to re-jig the backs (no names shall be mentioned). This spread feelings of discontent and confusion throughout the team, and in hindsight may not have been the best decision. But as Socrates said "If I knew what the lotto numbers were going to be, I would have picked them".

DLSP took advantage of this re-jig, and after many phases DLSP went over in the corner - it was a well worked try to be fair. 7-16. For the rest of the game, Bective chased the game. But despite some superb work from the forwards and great long punts from Chris, we failed to convert a number of try chances close in. All in all a tough bruiser of a game, with great entertainment for all those in attendance.

J4 League match report

By Donal Milmo-Penny

Our post Christmas lack of results continues. Its not that we are a bad team or have any major weaknesses but we seem to have lost a lot of the cohesion we had at the end of last year. Watching the game in Bird Avenue at the weekend it was clear that we were the better team but, as we all know you don’t get league points for looking good. Some of the skills on display were fantastic, our tactical kicking from hand in the first half especially from Evan and Joe was phenomenal and the movement and handling in one of attacking movements in the second half would have made a firsts backs coach smile. The trouble was we just did not convert this to points.

The game: The warm up was good and we had a good chat in the changing rooms and all seemed to leave well charged under Bart’s leadership. We generally absorbed Stillorgan pressure well in the first half and if there was one criticism it was that we failed to “stop” them in the tackle and more dragged them down letting them have the front foot. Positional kicking was excellent. Our try was a bit of a cheeky one and came from either great cunning or an attempt at foul play from Fergal Foley! A ruck had formed on the Stillorgan line and whilst Stillorgan were attempting to play the ball back to be cleared Fergal noticed that it was on the ground over the Stillorgan goal line and simply put his hand on it; 5 points Bective! Stillorgan’s 8 made a great impact with ball in hand and provided the basis for their try with a destructive run from which they built a number of phases to score. Stillorgan also added two penalties, one in the dieing minutes denying us a loosing bonus point. Stillorgan were gracious in their victory and their captain came in and thanked us for a good game played in good spirits. If we are honest with ourselves we all would have to say it was a disappointing performance and we could have dug deeper and got the result that was there waiting for us.

Why we lost.

1 Place Kicking: Being a team who boast an unusually good selection of accomplished boots our display on Saturday was disappointing. To my recollection we missed four relatively straight forward kicks at goal. OK, anything more then a 50% return on these would have changed the result but more importantly two of these were at crucial moments and could have changed the course of the game. This is something that can happen with kicking so no blame is being apportioned here but we might just come away from this game looking to spend more time working on this.

2 Support; the third man to the breakdown support play that we have been so good at lately was not there and whilst the pack looked to be working hard it could be said that the decisions on where to do this work were off.

3 Ruck time; another area where we have been good lately. We seemed to have collective amnesia about how this part of the game worked.

4 Positioning; I am referring to positioning of the majority of our pack who were on occasion interspersed through our backline. Lads, we all appreciate that you are hungry to carry ball and this is generally a good thing but sometimes the backs need to do their thing. Backs, if you happen to see any of the larger handless wonders hanging about at inopportune time please feel free to tell them to f*ck off!

We need to take things up a gear next week and lads need to make a bigger effort to train. Alasdair and I are aware of some of the lads circumstances which to not allow them to commit to regular training and that’s fine once we know we can work with this. After all its 3 B’s league and not the 6 Nations that we are competing in but out of respect to the coaches and to team mates it would be good if everyone would communicate their availability as far in advance as possible. For the rest of the season we are taking Monday nights as somewhat optional and are asking for commitments on Wednesday. From here on in we will be building for the Cup and want to practice playing Cup rugby. We are a good team and on our day can beat anyone in the B’s league (and I’m not saying that to encourage people, its simply a fact) so lets set our sights on the Cup and give it a really decent lash. The team spirit is there and the social aspect of things has been good this season. There is also a depth of commitment and determination that we need to dig into and return to our pre Christmas winning ways. Look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday and for everyone else your support on Saturday morning, 11am in Terenure, back pitch probably, would be welcome (although that might be the optimist in me getting too excited)!