St Mary's College RFC Yearbook 2020-21

away we had all three playing at once. Can
you imagine the poor referee having to
listen to three scrum halves on the one
team? Kav had only battled his way back
from the horrific injury he suffered away to
Clontarf in 2018 when a serious illness laid
him low. It was of great credit to him how he
remained positive and managed to defy the
odds and regain fitness and return to
playing in January. It gave the entire squad a
boost to have him back knowing what he
had gone through.
Our front row were stand out performers
comprising three of Niall McNiff, Keith
Mannion, Brian Mannion (who deservedly
was awarded the MVM award – Most
Valuable Mannion, sorry Keith!). Sean Healy
(a try scoring machine whose eve of match
ritual of a scatter of pints in Slatterys
resulted in him scoring a hat trick the
following day) and the one and only Podge
Dundon. Some have said that finding love
has caused Podge to mellow but I suspect
that opposing loose heads would beg to
differ! A big thanks to all those who helped
us out by stepping in at times to provide
cover at frontrow and to keep us legal.
Positions 4 to 8 must be spoken about
together as I suspect that every back row
Jumping high in Donnybrook.
53
Ian Bloomer tries to keep warm on 4th official duty.
played in the second row on some occasion
throughout the season after Liam and
Hugo’s most deserved elevation to the
Firsts, Cillian O’Neill treading a lonely path
as the only specialist second row. We had an
embarrassment of riches at backrow with
Andy Mooney, Conor Corcoran, Dan Lyons,
Sean Heeran, Jesse Lee, Ciaran O’Meara and
Gavin Potts to select from, though not once
were all available for the same game. Jesse
was sorely missed when he had to return
home to New Zealand in January but
hopefully, he will be back for the new
season as we all missed out on his end of
season Haka! Two matches in particular
stand out, both coincidently against
Barnhall. In the home fixture we were
missing a few players due to injury and
faced a huge Barnhall pack who up until
then had been demolishing all opposition
scrums. Barnhall were awarded a series of
penalties under our posts and repeatedly
chose to scrummage. A somewhat
makeshift front row, which was dwarfed by
their opposing numbers, made a heroic
stand winning a relieving penalty. We