Improving Clontarf draw the crowds

Time was when a Saturday afternoon assignment at Castle Avenue was a leisurely, drive-to-the-clubhouse-door affair. But Clontarf's recent AIB League exploits culminated in this, the biggest crowd of the season, causing a shortage of match programmes and announcements about cars blocking driveways.

Though the byword is still Division One survival, an extension of current form would signal a glorious, new chapter in the somewhat bleak history of the game in the north city. And this latest success owed much to the contributions of two New Zealanders.

Brent Pope, the Clontarf coach, has moulded an extremely mobile pack who showed themselves to be more than capable of overcoming physical limitations. And the approach was given most effective expression by New Zealand compatriot Craig Brownlie, at number eight.

Brownlie tackled as hard as he drove into rucks and crowned a fine display overall with two second-half tries. Naturally he was pleased. "That's what I came here to do," he said afterwards. "It's great to be able to repay Brent's faith in me."

The 6ft 3ins, 17st forward, first tasted club fare in this part of the world when he joined Hartlepool around Christmas 1996. After that, he returned to captain Poverty Bay. "Brent contacted me last October at the end of our season and I was here a week later, on November 1st," he added.

A measure of Clontarf's development since then is that they have beaten both Lansdowne and St Mary's College twice this season. Though they have now risen to the top half of the table, Pope cautioned: "We need a few more wins to secure Division One survival and next week at Ballymena won't be easy. Still, it's great to be heading in the right direction."

On this occasion, the team's sense of direction was faultless in most respects. They breached the Lansdowne line on no fewer than six occasions and all of those tries were converted by their highly-effective out-half, Richard Murphy.

His partnership with scrum-half Ronan O'Reilly was critical to the success of the team's running game. And by way of emphasising Clontarf's ability to defend, centre Matt Smith upended Lansdowne's Marcus Dillon in the 32nd minute with a stunning, lower body tackle of text-book quality.

Against all of this, Lansdowne were remarkably tame. Indeed they never actually succeeded in breaking through the Clontarf defence insofar as their total comprised a penalty goal and a converted penalty try. The latter was awarded for an infringement by defending left wing Micky Fitzsimons, who came back from an offside position.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Clontarf's display was their honest application in a scoreless third quarter. Leading 21-10 at that stage, it would have been easy to lose concentration and invite a Lansdowne revival, but they maintained the pressure and extended their lead in the 63rd minute.

That was the first and easily the more important of Brownlie's two tries. Eventually, they were scoring almost at will against thoroughly dispirited opponents.

"The guys felt a bit aggrieved that last week's win over Mary's was treated as such a major shock," said Pope. "Like me, they have no doubt about our ability to compete at this level."