We made it too hard for ourselves, laments Lawlor

Ardscoil Rís coach Mossy Lawlor has pledged his young side will be back more determined than ever for next year’s Seat Munster Schools’ Cup campaign.

“We’re no longer happy to be bridesmaids, we went out to win this match, not just to put up a good show,” said the former Munster player after yesterday’s defeat to Crescent College Comprehensive.

However, Lawlor did admit his young side wasn’t good enough to win this decider: “In the first half, we just didn’t come out, made some mistakes, missed two kicks to touch and lost two lineouts. In schools cup rugby you give the opposition a head start and there’s no coming back from it, especially against a team of the quality of the Comp.

“Over the last couple of rounds we have been a second-half team and it looked promising for a while when they hadn’t been able to score, but then they got 14 points and going into half-time, that was probably a bridge too far.

“We said at half-time not to panic, we did try to play rugby in the second half and we got a penalty straight away but unfortunately missed it; that could have been crucial. We were camped on their line for six minutes and came away with absolutely nothing. There was a bit of panic in attack, a bit of white line fever and then we turned over possession. Then they went back up the field and we got one of our own players binned, so all in all we made it too hard for ourselves on the day.”

His Crescent counterpart Conan Doyle acknowledged that Ardscoil Rís had made his side struggle for long periods.

“Yeah, we struggled for a while. We had a lot of territory for the first 25 up to the first score but had nothing to show and that was down to Ardscoil’s determination in defence as well. It was a good effort from Cormac Blake to get that opening try and happily the lads managed to push on from there.

“Experience certainly helped, there were tough moments during the game and the guys involved last year were outstanding in guiding the younger guys along.”