Ormond stay unbeaten after rare Rosbrien win

RUGBY: Energia All-Ireland League Division 2A Round 4

Old Crescent 6

Nenagh Ormond 29

MATCH DIGEST

Player of the Match: Conor McMahon (Nenagh Ormond)

SCORERS – Old Crescent: Pens – McKenna (2)

Nenagh Ormond: Tries – Skehan, J Coffey. Convs – McMahon (2). Pens – McMahon (4)

The Energia All Ireland League resumed on Saturday after its first mini-break with Nenagh Ormond looking to preserve the sole remaining unbeaten record amongst the division 2A clubs.

Despite Takumi Park in Rosbrien having been a quite unhappy hunting ground for Nenagh in this competition in recent years, confidence was high after the fast start to the season and once more the Nenagh men did not disappoint.

The performance on the day was a fitting tribute to two dearly missed clubmen who we have lost in recent times. Past Presidents Billy McNamara and Denis Butler were both remembered in a minute’s silence prior to kick-off. Their passing will be hard for the great many who loved them to bear but the manner in which Nenagh honoured their memory on Saturday will hopefully bring some comfort to their nearest and dearest at this sad time.

All rugby fans will have been busy watching proceedings in France over the last eight weeks as the Rugby World Cup worked its way to a thrilling final in Paris. Inevitably when knockout games come around in this tournament every four years the same pillars of performance are mentioned as necessities for success; a strong defence and a first class goal-kicker.

If Nenagh are to see things through to their ultimate goal of reaching Division 1 status in this league, they too will need to tick those requirements. Events in the past few weeks and especially on Saturday suggest the right pieces of that jigsaw may well be falling into place.

For the second game, running Nenagh conceded a measly six points and no tries over the course of eighty minutes if action. On top of this for more than the second game running Conor McMahon was in deadly form with the boot. Of Nenagh’s 29 points in this game he was responsible for nineteen from the boot. Such stats are what winning seasons are built on but obviously it’s early days and stiffer tests will follow.

Conditions were pretty poor and in such times the ability to make fewer mistakes rather than doing the spectacular is generally the order of the day. Both sides showed plenty of endeavour and intent but all through Nenagh had the edge in most aspects of play.

Nenagh’s set-piece has been a strong feature of their play for quite some time now and proved to be the case here again once more. Both Nenagh tries came through the forwards. Colm Skehan with the first after a well-executed lineout maul and Joe Coffey, a young player looking stronger by the game, with the second. In between, Conor McMahon did the damage with five penalties and converted both tries too.

Old Crescent, despite the advantage of an extra man for over half the game, simply did not appear to have the answers to the questions Nenagh were posing. In fact, it might have been even worse for them had Nenagh not had another try chalked off for a forward pass in the lead up to scoring.

Overall, Nenagh Ormond are in pretty rude health facing a long trek north to face Ballymena on Saturday next. This, as Nenagh well know, is a hard venue in which to take a result. The home side take great pride in being hard to beat on home turf and were also certainly no pushovers on their visit to Nenagh late last season. With only one win earned to date this season they will certainly have this fixture circled on their calendar as a chance to improve that record.

It will take all the resilience and craft Nenagh have shown to date and probably a bit more besides to keep up the run they are on this week but if we know one thing about this side it is that they relish a challenge like this. Write them off at your peril.

TEAMS – Old Crescent: Aaron Cosgrave; Sean Donnarumma, Cathal Monaghan, Werner Hoffman, Jason Aylward; Ronan McKenna, Micheal O’Hanrahan; Evan Creavan, Joe Rickard, James McCarthy; John Toland, Sean Monaghan; Oisin Toland, Luke Malone, John Lyons.

Reps: Lee O’Grady, Kevin Doyle, Karl Madden, Yasin Browne, Gareth Quinn McDonagh.

Nenagh Ormond: Josh Rowland; David Gleeson, Willie Coffey, Patrick Scully, Conor McMahon; Ben Pope, Nicky Irwin; Mikey Doran, Dylan Murphy, Colm Skehan; Jake O’Kelly, Kevin O’Flaherty; Joe Coffey, John Healy, Evan Murphy.

Reps: Sean Frawley, John O’Flaherty, John Hayes, Charlie O’Doherty, Derek Corcoran.

Referee: Tomas O’Sullivan