Paddy Jackson Masterclass Brings Home The Points
By Shawshank
February 1 2021
In years to come people will look back at the result of London Irish’s home game against the Newcastle Falcons on Sunday afternoon and say “31-22, probably a comfortable win for the home team…”. How wrong they would be, for what was becoming a pleasant and calm march to victory turned, in the final 20 mins, into a quite desperate and frenzied climax, where it appeared we would be letting a 16 point lead dissolve through our fingers…
There was no sense of the drama to come when an increasingly assured London Irish team purred into a 14-0 lead after 18 mins – firstly through a rolling maul try from Agustin Creevy, converted by Paddy Jackson, and then a try from the flying James Stokes in the right hand-corner, superbly converted again by Paddy.
Both were things of beauty, in their own way, especially the second which was a lovely training-ground move, with Paddy pulling the strings brilliantly.
Newcastle however showed why they had been beating all-comers this season with some excellent ball retention, and some Exeter-like pressure on our line resulted in a miss-pass thrown by Joel Hodgson for winger Ben Stevenson to score in the left-hand corner. Hodgson missed the conversion, as he had missed a ‘sitter’ at the start of the match, but finally kicked a penalty on the stroke of half-time for a 14-8 score line.
Four mins after the re-start came the incident that caused some post-match controversy – Tom Parton had collected a high kick on our own half, and punted the ball back and was then obstructed by the Newcastle full-back Adam Penny, and fell to the ground. After consulting the TMO ref Matt Carley gave Penny a yellow-card, which I thought at the time was a bit harsh, as whilst it was a clear penalty, Tom may have slightly milked the situation a tad – which was also the view of a grumpy Dean Richards after the game.
After the kicking the 3pts, Paddy then showed his International class, with some brilliant tactical plays – kicking to the open spaces left by the absent Newcastle full-back to gain territory, and then a nice cross-field kick resulting in a try for Curtis Rona, which Paddy again converted for a 24-8 lead.
Surely this would be enough to for us to now relax - our defence had been superb all match, it was now raining quite heavily, and points would be hard to come by for Newcastle, wouldn’t they..?
The Falcons however hadn’t read the script, as they started dominating possession and territory for the next 20 min. They were assisted by some poor LI discipline (and some bizarre refereeing) in us giving away any number of ‘soft’ penalties, and also some poor clearances from Nick Phipps, which failed to gain much distance.
And their incessant pressure then finally turned into points, with the Falcon’s replacement 9, Sam Stuart, burrowing over for a converted try on 71 mins, followed 5 mins later by another one from Gary Graham, to make it 24-22 with only 4 mins left. Falcons had all the momentum, and we looked more than a little shell-shocked.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only LI supporter who was kicking the proverbial cat literally into orbit at home.
But, praise-be, from the re-start Newcastle were caught in possession, and Allan Dell won a holding-on penalty. It was 25 yards out, and was a pretty regulation 3pts for Paddy in his current form, but we decided to kick to the corner – no doubt to eat up the clock, and also try to get the bonus point fourth try.
Adam Coleman (I think) rose magnificently to grab the ball, and then a beautiful rolling maul of the forwards and half of the backs thundered towards the line, with Motu Matu’u touching down, amid much screaming at the TV screen.
Paddy converted for 31-22, and despite more pressure from Falcons from the re-start, they weren’t able to score in over-time, with Blair Cowan playing scrum-half to joyously kick the ball into the stands.
My MOTM was Paddy, who really did look classy all afternoon. In the forwards Albert was immense again in defence, and Will Goodrick-Clarke was a rock at the scrum and defence.
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Didn’t see the game on telly. Was keeping in touch with scores
Have read various newspaper/BBC reports.
This gives me a much clearer picture of the game
😂
Living in the Scottish Borders, used to support London Irish, now following Kelso (newly promoted to the Scottish Premiership)
And SOB had a good solid game...
Quote:Shawshank
Cheers Guys - yes Creevy was immense, and has a happy knack of always doing the right thing.
And SOB had a good solid game...
Creevy also seems to get on really well with the refs