Highfield halt Waterpark’s run

Waterpark 13 Highfield 21

Highfield ambushed a Waterpark side at Ballinakill still shaking off the sloth of a Christmas break extended by last week's postponement of their league fixture with Naas.

The Cork side twice built leads as the energy levels of their Waterford rivals ebbed and flowed, leading 13-8 at half-time before Waterpark levelled and then running away with the game late in the second half.

"It's not as if we're in a losing rut or anything," Kelsey said. "I'm still happy with the way things are going.

"We started well enough but we just fell apart. The real disappointment was not the losing but that we played badly. If you play well and lose to the better team then you've got no complaints but we just didn't play very well.

"The long break we've had didn't help. We had gained momentum with each game we won but the break slowed us down a bit. We needed to play a game last week to get us back on track but we didn't and we were a week out of sync. And that was very obvious on Saturday."

"Our kicker, Corey Stunnell, missed six kicks out of seven and that didn't help but we got back into the game. It was 13-8 at half-time and we got back to 13-all midway through the second half and really we should of got on with it from there. But as soon as we got back in the game we took our foot off the pedal again.

"They came back up and kicked a field goal and then we dropped the ball in our own 22, they cantered ahead and scored the try which put them ahead at 21-13.

"So we've only got ourselves to blame. They scored two tries on bad mistakes from us.

"We really contributed to all their points as well as ours, save for the kicks. We were out of sorts and I put it down to the fact that we were rusty after the Christmas break.

"Hopefully we'll pick things up next week and get back on track to doing what we were doing before Christmas."

Kelsey came to the club from the Calgary Irish club in Canada in October and brought with him 30 years of coaching experience which included stints in his native Canberra in charge of the pre-Super 12 ACT provincial side.

"I came here with modest ambitions so to be at the top of the table undefeated at the Christmas break wasn't in the script at all. But having said that we deserve to be there. We've played consistent, uncompromising rugby.

"We worked pretty hard leading into the AIL season and worked on a pattern of play that we thought we could carry on. We're the sort of team that's prepared to be patient and wait for opportunities to come along and then take them and that's we did in most of the games we played. There's only one of those six games before Christmas that was a resounding victory, against Connemara. All the others were grafting wins where we'd set ourselves a goal to be at a certain stage by half-time, then come and steal the game towards the end of them. All that is based on a strong defence and a willingness to exploit opportunities as they arise. On Saturday all that went out the window and it's a wake-up call for when we play Naas next week.

"We need to get back on track because the games coming up are tough ones, against four of the teams that were right behind us Wanderers, Corinthians, Instonians and Clonakilty. But if we're going to be any good at these things we've got to meet them, match them and beat them. The proof will be in how we get back up again after this result."