"Cool prove too hot for Mullingar

On Sunday last Mullingar made the trip to Coolmine Rugby Club in Dublin. Coolmine would be regarded as probably the strongest of the teams in this division and they made their intentions known from the start.Within the first three minutes they were awarded a penalty directly in front of the posts and their influential outside half slotted over their first points of the day. Mullingar took some time to settle in the opening period and Coolmine used their dangerous looking backline to great effect.It certainly looked like it was going to be a tough day for the travelling side. Mullingar settled however, and they started to put their own stamp on the game. Tom McAuliffe made a fine drive with the ball and fed to Giant Scott Watson who made good ground. Coolmine were penalised for hands in the ruck on 10 minutes and Gareth Butler levelled the score.From the restart Coolmine again released their inside centre and fed to their fullback coming at pace. He broke through the Mullingar cover to take a well worked try right of the posts. The resulting conversion was successful and Mullingar trailed by seven points, 10-3. Some great work in the pack from Ray Murphy, Watson, McAuliffe, Farrell and Collentine kept Mullingar very much in the game and in fact the entire remainder of the half was spent in the Coolmine 22. Mullingar were well able for this top side and should have made more of their possession and territory. Mullingar failed with the last pass on several occasions but to be fair the covering defence was resolute and up very quickly on the Mullingar backline thereby forcing the errors.Mullingar made some poor decisions by kicking possession away and giving Coolmine the opportunity to release their backline and this proved to be the difference between the two sides. The hard work of the pack was rewarded on 25 minutes with another penalty chance which Butler converted. Coolmine again stretched their lead on 35 minutes with another penalty kick, 13-6. Mullingar finished the half with a flurry with Brian Murphy making a fine run but he was held up short of the line.The second half started well for Mullingar with a superb drive off the lineout by Scott Watson. Watson has come of age with this team and his influence was immense throughout the game. He made 20 yards with players hanging out of him, went to ground rolled over and emerged again on his feet with the ball in hand. The ball was fed through the backline from Butler to Niall Smith who crashed over for a fine try. Game on at13-13.However, the visitors lost their way a bit after this with a missed penalty to touch and generally poor tactical kicking. Two other penalty kick attempts were narrowly wide and static ball in the backline gave the momentum to the Coolmine backline. Although most of the second half was based in the Coolmine 22, Mullingar failed to turn their possession into points. Passes dropped and failed touchline kicks gave possession to the opposition and every time their backline had ball in hand they looked really dangerous. Poor tackling in the centre of the field led to two more tries for Coolmine in the last 10 minutes and the game was well and truly gone from Mullingar"s grasp.On the positive side, this was a really strong Coolmine team and most teams in this division will struggle to overcome them this season. The Mullingar lineout was very good all afternoon as was their scrum., two areas that had been clearly lacking for the past number of games. The work on these two areas in training was obvious.The Mullingar backline looked static all afternoon and they clearly need to focus on getting quicker ball from the base of the scrum and maul. Mullingar clearly have nothing to fear from any team this season and if they can get their backline functioning in tandem with the pack they will prove to be hard to beat.Next game is at home to Longford 1sts and 2nds in the Leinster League. 2nds kick-off at 1.30pm, 1sts at 3pm.