Leinster League 1B Tullow 22 Longford 8
Longford came away from a crucial Division 1B clash showing nothing for their efforts, despite giving their all.
The clash was crucial for the wrong reason in that after the defeat Longford are firmly in possession of the relegation/promotion play off place with two matches still to play.
Things looked so differently earlier in the season with Longford running in five tries, enough for a bonus point win against the same opposition.
The match was played on Tullow’s new 4G pitch on a bitterly cold and windy day, with the wind blowing down the pitch to the clubhouse end.
Things did not start out as planned from a Longford point of view as Tullow got hold of the ball from the kick-off and relentlessly pummelled the Longford line with their big pack. To Longford’s credit they held out well but eventually, Tullow made the breakthrough from a driving maul to go 5-0 in-front.
Tullow then added a penalty to stretch their lead to 8 points.
Longford fought back with some field position but try as they might did not get over the Tullow line and did not add any scores.
The wind made any penalty opportunities extremely difficult. Longford were left to regret this as Tullow crashed over for two tries just before half-time to leave the deficit 22-0.
The second-half was virtually all about Longford trying to score and Tullow trying to stay strong in defence and unfortunately from a Longford point of view they did not quite show enough guile in attack to out fox a committed Tullow defence who slowed the match down at every opportunity.
Longford were limited in the second-half to one try and a penalty from Ryan McHugh to go down to a disappointing 22-08 loss.
Longford have two matches remaining with the home fixture versus Mullingar a big one. The maths are fairly simple at this stage, Longford need two wins from their last two games at home to Mullingar and away to Cill Dara if they are to avoid having to compete in the relegation/promotion play off against the team that finish second in Division 2A.
Longford Squad: J Forde, H Connolly (C), D Quinn, B McManus, J Geelan, M McHugh, P Molloy, F McGowan, A Wynne, R Shaw, D McHugh, G McDermott, J McGowan, R McHugh, L Brady, P Dardis, Aaron, F Davis, C Hughes & D Connolly.
Post-match Reaction from Longford RFC Senior Men’s Head Coach Glenn Baskett
“Without stating the obvious that result is disappointing, it’s not what we needed but we have to learn quickly ahead of Mullingar next weekend.
We knew this was a huge game for both of us today and Tullow managed the wind well in both halves through their ball carrying options, better than we did.
I thought 15-0 at half-time would have been a fair result for us to turn and play with the wind, but to concede the seven pointer right on half-time was tough.
That said I thought we had enough in the group to challenge them defensively. But if I’m honest we didn’t ask enough questions in the second-half and made it easy for Tullow.
They did defend well but we could have challenged them more. I can’t fault the effort of the boys throughout the 80, but we probably didn’t match their ball carrying options. Credit to Tullow who managed the ref and the clock in that second-half by going down and soaking up time and momentum when we had ascendancy at times.
Our attack needs to paint different pictures and we have a week to do that.”
