Improved under-14 team enjoy fruitful trip to Tipp
ROSCREA DUNDALK 20 29
DUNDALK U-14s made the long journey to Tipperary on Saturday morning to take on Roscrea.
Having suffered a heavy defeat to Gorey last time out Dundalk needed to get a good performance and a win together in order to get themselves in good position to make the Division 1 league semi finals later in the year.
Dundalk started strongly on a fine day for rugby by producing their best first half of the season to date.
The defensive line speed and the tackling led by captain Conor Whyte meant Roscrea, who relied on their pack of forwards to get them going forward, were knocked down behind the gain line constantly and from this pressure Dundalk regularly forced turnovers in good field position.
Dundalk’s skill level was superior to their opponents and their ability to move the ball wide to centre Josh Speight and full back Bobby McCaul ensured they constantly got over the gainline.
It was from this excellent ball movement that Dundalk’s first try of the game came from centre Euan McArdle who broke through the Roscrea defensive line to get Dundalk on the board.
The Dundalk scrum would yield the next two tries and good solid ball from the pack allowed scrum half Daniel Gregory feed blindside Liam Keelan who weaved his way through three would be tacklers and sprinted away to touch down under the posts for try number two, which was converted by DD Reilly.
The third try came when Gregory fed Reilly off solid scrum ball and then Reilly through a beautiful skip to centre Spaight who sprinted onto the pass and ran through to touchdown without having a Roscrea hand touch him.
After half-time Dundalk continued the strong performance when out half Reilly made a break in midfield and running the ball in two hands bamboozled the outside backs defence to run into a gap and then fenced off three tacklers with excellent handoffs to dot down for try number four, which he then converted himself to make it 0-24.
After this Dundalk’s performance dropped down to bad habits with poor line speed and missed tackles and they fell very much on the wrong side of the home ref especially at the ruck.
This momentum allowed Roscrea to score three tries which thankfully for Dundalk were all unconverted to bring the score to 15-24.
Roscrea had to work really hard to get their score as they relied on their backs but from the kick off of Roscrea’s third try Dundalk found their groove again and some excellent handling from the backs saw Josh Spaight aced over to put the game beyond Roscrea.
Despite a few injuries stoppages this should have been full time but the ref decided to play on and over 15 minutes into injury time Roscrea made their way over through their forwards for their fourth try and that brought an end to the game.