Galway
Tribesmen 38 Dublin City Exiles 18
The Galway Tribesmen Rugby League team earned a hard
fought victory against the Dublin City Exiles last Saturday at South Park, The
Claddagh. The match was billed as a tough, thrilling encounter and it did not
disappoint.
The Tribesmen Kicked off to the Exiles in customary
breezy conditions at South Park and very quickly had the Exiles defending in
their own danger zone. However, strong defence by the Dublin team denied the
Galway men any chance of scoring in the early stages. Strong running by both
sets of forwards and tenacious defence provided a precarious seesaw battle for
the first quarter of the game and it wasn’t until the 25th minute until Seosamh
McDonagh broke the deadlock for the Tribesmen to register 4 points. McDonagh
converted his own try to give the Tribesmen a 6 point lead. The big Tribesmen
forwards, in particularly Terry Abayomi and Enda Stanford continued to build a
platform and it wasn’t long before they registered another score through centre
Paddy Finn. The Galway men began to get a grip on the game and sustained
pressure led to further scores from James ‘Junior’ Kennedy and Rory Murphy. With
the conversions added by McDonagh, the Tribesmen were ahead 22-0 and this is
how the score remained until half time.
The second half commenced as the first half had
ended, with all the pressure on the Exiles line. Once again, McDonagh scored and
converted his own try as he did in the first half. After a near perfect
defensive effort for close to 60 minutes by the Galway men, the Exiles mounted
a serious fight back and started making huge inroads in the Tribesmen defence.
A superb individual effort by John Rhattigan gave the Exiles their first points
of the game, and the Dublin men followed this with another brace of tries in
quick succession and before long the scores were 28-18 to the Tribesmen. The
Galway side, however, recovered a bit of composure and some clever footwork
from Ryan Guilfoyle allowed him to skip through the Exiles defensive line.
Myles Upton added another score not long afterwards and with the 2 points added
the scores were now at 38-18. The Exiles tried to extend their points haul in
the closing stages with some good pressure on the Tribesmen goal line but were
unable to add to their tally and the game ended 38-18 to the home team.
After back to back wins at home, the Tribesmen are
on the road again next Saturday when they travel to Athboy RLFC in County Meath
in an attempt to register a hat trick of victories.
