St Mary's College RFC Yearbook 2020-21

turned out was against Stillorgan played in
Terenure. Perhaps the finest performance of
the season was produced to beat a dogged
Stillorgan team. Our boys outclassed and
out muscled a fine Stillorgan team to banish
the result from before X-Mas. Score: Mary’s
20 - Stillorgan 14.
• The win v Stillorgan put us in a position we
thought impossible earlier in the season, if
we beat CYM in a re-fix of a weather
cancelled league game, we could play
Stillorgan away in a league final. Sadly due
to the Covid pandemic measures, this game
could not be played and what could have
been we will never know.
• The only game we did manage to play
before the league was pulled was a Moran
Cup loss away to Greystones. A decent 1st
half against a team a division above us was
not enough and Greystones ran out
winners. Score: Graystones 24 - Mary’s 12.
Whilst the season will go down as a chance
missed and never finished we do get the
benefit of some learnings:
• Despite a poor 1st half of the season we
were in the mix at the end of the season.
The division is highly competitive but
opportunities to win it are there.
• More commitment and buy in from players
could have put us in a far better position at
Christmas as those 3 BP losses could have
easily been wins.
• The assistance of the Under 20 players was
great and needs to be better utilised.
• We will never know if we would have got
much benefit of training away from the J2s
after Christmas as the weather was so poor,
most training was called off or forced to be
taken with the J2s anyway as pitch space
was gold dust.
• My personal view on this is that the J2s and
J3s learnt a lot from training with each
other but it alienates J4 players due to the
gap in their skill set and physicality. The
player base is poor and needs to be built
up especially in the prop and second row
positions. Experienced scrumagers are few
and far between so we struggled with
injuries all season in that department.
Despite that, our scrum was solid but are
line out less so.
• A strong line out will win games.
• A more consistent team sheet would have
walked the season so players need to
prioritise their rugby over socials and trips,
after all the season is short, just 13 or 14
games, I think players will appreciate that
David McGill,
picking up his John
Cunningham Player
of the month award
for September 2019
from Vinnie
Cunningham
(Current President)
and Michael
O’Flaherty (Past
President & Current
J3/J4 Coach).
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