Shannon blow strong into the wind

SOMEHOW, Shannon invariably do just enough. Garryowen were left to rue another game against Shannon that got away after a spirited fightback that fell a point too short.

Yet it cannot be a coincidence that this was Shannon's fifth successive league win over their Limerick adversaries.

The champions yet again produced one of their trademark 10 minute bursts - buttressed by a late penalty off the post - immediately after the resumption, which dug them out of a hole not entirely of Garryowen's making.

But this was by no means a vintage Thomond Park derby. The 5,000 crowd - far removed from the 15,000 that packed the same venue for the 1992 meeting - were reduced to somnolent and bemused onlookers by the sheer awfulness of a first half punctuated by two Andrew Thompson penalties and precious little else.

Considering they've four titles between them, the amount of mistakes made in that opening period defied belief. The two sides probably threw more loose passes, lost more ball in contact, took more wrong options and missed touch kicks than in a month of Saturdays.

Having faced the stiff wind, Garryowen would still have been the happier of the two after containing Shannon without undue bother, all the more so when Mick Galwey's back strain gave way on the restart. Perhaps it lulled them into a false sense of security.

They waited for the wind to do the work for them, and instead were almost blown away by the sheer intensity of Shannon's post interval burst.

In the modern game, a strong wind ain't all it's cracked up to be. Continuity is everything and for 10 minutes Shannon didn't give Garryowen a sighting of the ball. Eddie Halvey, Alan Quinlan and Anthony Foley were launched at the visitors, the ball was retained and recycled quickly where before it had been laboured.

Another Thompson penalty was augmented by a brilliant, sweeping try which was almost out of context in the game itself. The sheer intensity of the 15 man effort that went into that score left Garryowen's bodies scattered around the pitch as a sustained bout of running rugby culminated in Pat Murray (one of the day's, more assured performers) looping around Alan McGrath for Billy O'Shea to cross wings and score from Thompson's pass.

Rory Sheriff, the boy mountain, and 18 year old Marcus Horan underlined the holders' strength in depth, with the latter forming what the dressing room jokingly referred to as a "father and son prop alliance with 37 year old Noel Healy.

Adversity, then, seems to bring out the best in Shannon. "We've found ourselves in worse positions but we turned over six points up and against that gale you needed 15 to 18 points today," said O'Donovan afterwards.

"I'm sure all Garryowen thought they had to do in the second half was go out on to the park. In fairness, we upped it a gear and I thought played some great rugby. The try was a beauty. We showed great character, I thought, in the second half," he concluded.

So too, it must be said, did Garryowen. Admittedly with a little help; Halvey taking a pass from Brian McGoey inside his 22 standing still and well behind his pack, as the prelude to Killian Keane's opening penalty. Then Quinlan needlessly taking a 22 to himself and leaving O'Shea isolated with the ensuing pass in the build up to Shane Leahy's well controlled try from a line out cum rolling maul.

Thompson's penalty off the upright was sandwiched by further Keane penalties but Shannon kept Garryowen out with relative ease, and if the truth be told, the home side deserved their win.

As a dispirited Philip Danaher, the Garryowen coach, conceded, that 10 minute burst was decisive.