Pres game-plan pays dividends

PBC head coach Don Buckley, along with his coaching ticket of Paul Barr (formerly of St Michael’s) and Highfield’s Steve Forde, have now led Pres to Senior Cup success in two of the last three deciders.

The game-plan Buckley and his coaching team brought worked magnificently, a template that resulted in a deserved win for the Mardyke school.

If Buckley brought the correct game-plan to the mix, his team carried it out to the letter, and showed a mature ability to play — what is sometimes referred to as an Eddie O’Sullivan aphorism — “both sides of the football”.

“We knew the weather forecast and we knew we were going to play in a gale,” said Buckley. “We knew we had to control the ball into the elements and prevent them from getting any degree of momentum. And, to be fair to our lads, by and large in that first half they controlled it magnificently. It mightn’t look pretty for the neutral, but, at the end of the day, what we wanted to do was control the football.

“It was 30 minutes before Christians got a lineout in the match — that was a factor in our thinking, we didn’t want to give them close-in lineouts because we figured that by them playing into the Sunday’s Well corner, if we gave them any head of steam that they’d steamroll us.”

Buckley pointed to Simon Zebo’s classy individual 11th minute try as a “massive score”.

“Psychologically it was a big turning point and particularly when we scored again ten minutes later, I thought it was a real body blow to them as well.”

Christians never threw in the towel and Buckley wasn’t surprised CBC dominated for large chunks of the second half. “You have to give them credit — they have unbelievable heart. Against the gale in the second half, they came at us big time.”

There was no more industrious and cohesive unit yesterday that the PBC back-row triumvirate, who were magnificent in the breakdown, the tackle and ball-carrying.

“We do an awful lot of work on breakdown area in training, and when you have special players like Brian O’Hara, Peter O’ Mahony and Niall Barry in the back-row it really helps your cause.”

For Pres captain Scott Deasy, yesterday marked a special day as the out-half collected his second Senior Cup medal in three years. He was also part of the 2005 Cup winning side that also beat CBC 6-3 in the decider.

“To lift the cup on behalf of the lads is an honour. We put in so much work and effort it’s a credit to them.

“It’s hard to tell whether it’s more special than the ‘05 win, but it might be because these are my friends I’ve grown up with and played with for the last six years. I’m just delighted to be there with them today in victory.”

Deasy will link up with the Ireland U19’s before the World Championship begins in Belfast in April.

CBC head coach Peter Melia acknowledged that on the day, “we didn’t turn up. We’re hugely disappointed,” he said. “We made far too many unforced errors, and didn’t apply any pressure on them really.

“If you go into a game with that profile and make so many unforced errors, the outcome is likely to be negative. That really was it today.”

“Pres profited from having so much possession and used it wisely. I suppose in hindsight you could say the game was over at half time.”

Melia, however, was hugely encouraged by his side’s gutsy second half display.

He added: “I just said at half time we needed to exert more control on the ball. We got a few good field positions but unfortunately we just didn’t cement those with points on the board. It’s disappointing really.”