St Mary's consigned to drop

Galwegians - 19 St Mary's - 13 Houdiniesque scarcely tells the half of it. Approaching the last day in February with nine defeats from ten matches (and just six points out of a possible 50), Galwegians didn't look so much marooned as tied, handcuffed, bound, gagged and strait-jacketed at the bottom of a barrel.

But an opportunistic and heroic, backs-to-the-wall win at Crowley Park on Saturday completed a remarkable piece of escapology as Galwegians moved above the relegation trapdoor for the first time in the campaign with just a point to spare.

This third win in their concluding four games, in which they picked up 14 points, relegated St Mary's, who had been one of only four teams to have been ever-presents in the first division of the AIL since its inception, alongside Shannon, Cork Constitution and Garryowen.

St Mary's were also the first club outside Munster to win the AIL, four seasons ago, and this was a cruel way to mark Brent Pope's last game as coach after five years at the club.

"That's sport," said a devastated Pope, "but it's a huge blow. The club have done everything they could but we've been haemorrhaging players for years and it's hard to attract players, with the traditional feeder school feeding Trinity and UCD.

"There is no reward now for producing professional players. Where do we find the replacements?"

All the more so, he estimated, now they're in the second division.

St Mary's were also miffed that Victor Costello and Malcolm O'Kelly hadn't been released by Leinster for this critical game. But at least they had John McWeeney, Gavin Hickie and Emmet Byrne; Galwegians didn't have access to any of their Connacht frontliners.

Eric Elwood et al had to watch from the sidelines and the notion of Galwegians surviving in the top flight without nine contracted players would have been unthinkable up until their recent under-20 investment bore fruit this year.

After a rousing rendition of The Blues, long-standing captain John Casserley commented: "It's a great achievement . . . Early on in the year we had some really heavy defeats to the likes of Belfast Harlequins and Ballymena, but we stuck at it, and the big difference was that we started to believe we could win."

On one of those wild, wild west days that you wouldn't have put the cat out (though four coach-loads from Templeogue swelled the crowd to 1,000) Galwegians had stealthily sneaked a point in front against the first-half elements.

Scrumhalf Michael Roche probed the blind side from his own 22 and linked with Kiwi full back Brendan Bartley for an early long-range try, and multi-positional, multi-purpose flanker Henry Bourke rumbled in determinedly from a ruck on the 22.

David Delaney added two difficult conversions and despite having more of the territory, only once were St Mary's able to engineer an overlap for winger Rob Smyth to score, Barry Lynn converting and adding a penalty to leave Galwegians 14-13 to the good at the break.

Nonetheless, after both teams changed sodden jerseys at the interval, the force remained with St Mary's. In part this was because the wind and rain ebbed somewhat, though primarily it was due to the impact Hickie and Byrne lent to their lineout maul and scrum.

Their lineout creaking, Galwegians couldn't construct anything over two or three phases, but the experienced John Casserley and Mervyn Murphy helped hold them together, the latter pouncing on a rare sortie upfield with a pick-up and blind-side try off a ruck.

Even the binning of Hickie hardly stemmed the Mary's tide but the division's least potent try-scoring attack never went wide.

Thrice the St Mary's pack were over the Galwegians line without grounding the ball and thrice Lynn missed kickable penalties, though quite why the visitors opted for a kick at goal in the 77th minute when only a win would do beggars belief.

It was then that another of Galwegians' impressive young homespun talents, Mick Carroll, was sent to the bin but Galwegians heroically put their bodies literally on the line in a nailbiting endgame.

As in the campaign as a whole, they couldn't have cut it any finer.

SCORING SEQUENCE: 4 mins: Lynn pen 0-3; 7: Bartley try, Delaney con 7-3; 20: R Smyth try, Lynn con 7-10; 27: Lynn pen 7-13; 33: Bourke try, Delaney con 14-13 (half-time 14-13); 73: Murphy try 19-13.

GALWEGIANS: B Bartley; J Littleton, M Murphy, D Balcombe, J Cleary; D Delaney, M Roche; F Farrell, J Burke, P Hanlon, J Casserley, C Murphy, H Bourke, M Carroll, I Muldoon. Replacements: K Dooley for Bartley (55 mins), M Uijs for Muldoon (57 mins), A Conboy for Hanlon (63 mins). Sin-binned: Carroll (77 mins).

ST MARY'S: D Hughes; J McWeeney, K Gilligan, C Fifield, R Smyth; B Lynn, E McCormack; M Duggan, P Smyth, D Clare, J Ryan (capt), C Potts, J Ellis, W Duggan, N Smith. Replacements: G Hickie for Smyth (half-time), E Byrne for M Duggan (63 mins), F Fitzgerald for W Duggan (75 mins), P Smyth for Smith (66-74 mins). Sin-binned: Hickie (64 mins).

Referee: D Courtney (IRFU)