Seapoint v Tallaght 1sts
Metro League Division 7 final
Saturday 6th April 2019
Kilbogget Park, Killiney
Kick-off 3PM

The Tallaght men’s firsts team are hoping the third time is the charm.

They’ve made the final of the Metro League Division 7 for the third year running but they’re confident they can get over the line this time. They take on a Seapoint team in a rich vein of form though. Seapoint have had a curious season. They started off like they’re been playing for the last few seasons; solid but unspectacular winning just four of their first seven league games. However since January, they’ve been in an impressive run of form winning every match in a run to finish top of the table.

In their first seven games they averaged 15 points a game. But in their next five matches they averaged 42 points a game, a fairly remarkable improvement! One of those victories was a 38-10 win over Tallaght at Tymon Park in January. It was one of those games where everything went right for Seapoint and everything went wrong for Tallaght. However it served as something of a wake up call for Tallaght.

They had been winning games earlier in the season without playing all that well and after that defeat they had a honest team meeting and made a collective commitment to correct things. Since then they’ve won their last three league games in a row including a nervy winner-takes-all clash against AIB to make the final and Tallaght head coach Tom Leigh is looking forward to the final.

“To reach the final for the third year in row is a massive achievement for Tallaght RFC especially against all the bigger and more established clubs. The team had a solid start to the year and training was going well. But we weren’t playing to our normal standard even though we were getting results. But this caught us out in January when we lost back to back matches so we had to take a good look at ourselves and had to challenge each other both off and on the pitch.”

“The reaction has been so positive that you can see the progression of the team on a weekly basis and this has shown in results having won the last 3 games thus qualifying the team for the final. This year’s captain Adam Nolan has been a massive influence with his performance on the pitch and having a positive influence off the pitch. The addition to the coaching staff this year of Gary Brennan focusing on the backs has challenged the players and you can see the improvement levels with them every week. Luke Tyrrell’s role this year has seen him move into a management position and his influence on the team and the club is another reason we are competing in another final.”

“We went into a joint team with DLSP this season with our seconds team and it worked out really well but we’d be hopeful that with the numbers at training, we’d have enough players to go on our own in Division 11 next season. The commitment of the players continue to amaze me and I really hope we perform to our best ability on the day and make their families proud of them. Tallaght RFC is so proud and appreciative of our supporters so let’s enjoy the day and hopefully we get a massive crowd out to Seapoint to cheer us on.”

Seapoint are a tough team at home but Tallaght won there 20-15 earlier in the season so they will travel with confidence and hopefully as with last year’s final, there’s a big crowd of Tallaght supporters to cheer them on.

Dave Clarke

Adam Nolan

Jack Russell

Daniel Pomares 

Ken McGovern

Aaron Shanahan

Daryl Keogh