Trinity have done it, they clinched promotion to Division 1 with two games to go!
The students travelled the four plus hours to bottom placed team Clonakilty. The game always had ‘banana skin’ written all over it as Trinity had never won in Shannonvale, added to this Clonakilty were staring the stark reality of relegation straight in the face and would be motivated by that fact.
The game played in beautiful sunny weather, incredibly as a contest was over in four minutes! By this time Trinity had two tries on the scoreboard after scores by full back James O’Donoghue and flanker Johnny Iliff. The forwards followed this up with a well-rehearsed line out play to score again. On 22 minutes Neil Hanratty finished off some impressive continuity to clinch the very important bonus point for four tries.
Clonakilty came back with some fine rugby of their own and they scored by the posts after some sustained pressure on the Trinity line. 26-7 after only 30 minutes.
Trinity managed to score three more tries through wing Niyi Adeolokun showed his amazing speed to score, and replacement centre Rob Creuss Callaghan showed some nice speed and footwork to score two of his own before half time.
45-7 at half time it was just question of how many points Trinity would score with the home team possibly eyeing a losing bonus point if the game got way too loose!
The first try was probably the most impressive try when off a line out scrum half Mick McLoughlin took the ball running and passed to wing Neil Hanratty who broke the line, the wing looked clear only to be tap tackled he then rolled and popped the ball up to flanker Johnny Iliff who raced over for his second try.
The Students kept up their try scoring exploits with more tries from Ariel Robles who used bewildering footwork to score, Dave Joyce who scored after an outrageous dummy scissors, McLoughlin who raced in from 40 metres out and Adeolokun scored the last try on the final whistle to close out the game.
At the end of the game the Trinity players embraced each other in delight and celebrated with their large supporters group who had travelled in anticipation of the team winning the league. Needless to say the long trip back to Dublin was a lot of fun – celebrated by all…
Dublin University: 15 James O’Donoghue (Rob Creuss Callaghan 20), 14 Neil Hanratty, 13 Ciaran Wade, 12 Ariel Robles, 11 Niyi Adeolokun, 10 Dave Joyce, 9 Mick Mcloughlin (Billy Glynn 48); 1 Ian Hirst (Tom Collis), 2 Tim O’Mahony (Warren Larkin 30), 3 Paul McFeely, 4 Colin McDonnell, 5 Jack Kelly, 6 Johnny Iliff, 7 Eamon Guinan (Brian Du Toit 45), Jack Dilger
