And so the travelling circus of Clontarf heads for another day out in the Aviva. There’s been a great focus on recent statistics since the last match report, and rightly so. It is fully justified to look on the Club’s record over the past few years,with a great sense of group pride. Everyone is part of this; so be proud! However, I would point out the words of Henry Ford, “ History is Bunk” in reading too much into historical achievement. The fact is, it means absolutely nothing to what will happen on Sunday. It’s like nostalgically browsing through photos of past girlfriends while your current partner stands over you with a kettle of boiling water!
Memories are great, but reality bites next Sunday!
On Saturday, Lansdowne came to Castle Avenue and confirmed their deserved reputation as a class act – both on and off the pitch. Our last meeting, on the Aviva back pitch, saw a win for Lansdowne, but Clontarf showed enough in that loss to make even the most partisan Lansdowne man a little apprehensive of this clash.
Clontarf, on any rugby day, are loaded for bear, but have the alarming ability to shoot themselves in the foot, which they did with depressing regularity in the Aviva. On Saturday, they overcame an indifferent start,which gifted Lansdowne cheap entry into the home 22 for 2 tries and then produced the war hammer for the middle section of the game, where they became close to unplayable.
Tarf opened the scoring when Peter Maher hit a huge gap off a lineout. The ball was carried on at pace and, when released left, Fionn Gilbert went in untouched for 7 0.