In a bottom-of-the-table clash, Dublin University Football Club (DUFC) emerged triumphant this weekend with a vital win over Buccaneers in Athlone. It was the side’s second consecutive win, after a disastrous start to the season, which featured three heavy defeats.
The game started with an insistent attack from Buccaneers that Trinity fought hard to stave off. Sharp passing from Buccaneers’ scrum-half set up a flurry of fierce attacks that put them dangerously close to Trinity’s try-line. A series of penalties, attacking lineouts and short-lived turnovers, helped take some of the pressure off Trinity’s defence, but with Buccaneers’ aggression not letting up, Trinity struggled to make any serious ground. It was a Buccaneers penalty by Luke Carty that first put points on the board, making it 3–0 to the hosts with 17 minutes gone.
When a deft kick from Michael Courtney finally offered DUFC a break, placing them five metres from the try line, Buccaneers’ players displayed their own defensive mettle. In addition, slippery conditions, fumbled passes and a few poor line-outs created ill-fortune and ill-discipline, which kept Trinity from posing a serious threat. With a back-and-forth of territorial dominance ensuing, Trinity had to make do with a penalty to equalise, offered by an offside Buccaneer and knocked over by Tommy Whittle 10 minutes before half-time.
Overall the first half progressed as a high-energy stalemate. Both sides fought vicious battles in the opposition’s 22, and while Trinity kept dominance over the scrums and line-outs, Buccaneers took every advantage offered to them, repeatedly picking up dropped balls and winning turnovers that spurred on their attacks. Play was only moved forward by intermittent penalties, with a penalty from Trinity’s Whittle within 10 minutes of half-time making it 6–3 to Trinity at the end of a tense first half.
The pattern of prolonged attacks eventually giving way to penalties looked set to continue into the second half. Just minutes in, a perfectly placed kick by Buccaneers put a line-out within touching distance of the try line. Under pressure, Trinity were forced into the concession of two more penalties. Carty’s patience in kicking these meant the hosts’ patience had paid off, the scoreline now reading 9–6.
Perhaps it was the subsequent miss of a penalty by the otherwise faultless Whittle and a yellow card for a Buccaneers player that motivated it, but it was about 10 minutes into the second half when the game really came alive. It started with a fierce and well-managed attack by the Buccaneers on Trinity’s corner, punctuated by slick passing between both the scrum- and fly-half. But a shoddy line-out gave Trinity’s Hugh Connors an opportunity for an 80-metre charge, and supported by Seb Fromm, he initiated a period of sustained dominance for Trinity. A brief lapse of control was made up for by several more fantastic runs, the most impressive coming from Michael Silvester, whose charge from the Trinity half was only brought down in the Buccaneers’ 22.
A penalty try, awarded for a deliberate knock-on, tilted the scoreboard in DUFC’s favour. Within minutes, a clever chip from instrumental substitute James Fennelly found Silvester, the latter touching down for the first proper try of the game on the hour mark. An easy conversion put the score at 20–9 to Trinity, but the team was quickly caught as Buccaneers drove over to bring themselves within a converted try of DUFC. Nevertheless, Buccaneers were losing their precision by this point and Trinity were only too happy to punish them.
Fennelly stroked the ball over the bar to put clear daylight between the sides, before Silvester crashed over in the final minutes to put some gloss on the scoreline. The result was a positive for Trinity and the team will take confidence from the performance ahead of a tricky home clash against mid-table Cork Constitution next week.
