Rugby: Joes get mauled by Trinity

Trinity College’s mauls seemed to be a tad too much for St. Joseph’s College to hold off, let alone handle, as it saw the visitors dominating the game and piling up points in the first half and going on to record a comprehensive 29-7 win at Longdon Place.

St. Joseph’s seven penalties that were conceded in the prior half was the chief factor that enabled Trinity to find decent touches, and then attack with their mauls to lead by a considerable margin by lemons. Apart from those penalties that dragged Joes down, they defended well with a unified and well-planned defence formation, combined with effective tackling that made free-flow attacking an uphill task downhill in Colombo for Trinity.

Joes settled down in the latter half by constraining their offenses to five, while Trinity messed up most of their maul offensives launched off those penalties on their own, by either hooking off-target, or by infringing in the mauls. The visitors’ 10 plus penalty count in the latter half seldom helped them continue their onslaughts from the bountiful half either.

Joes hardened their defences in the latter half making (but not forcing), Trinity commit abnormally high handling errors in comparison to their better half, which they closed at 22-0 at the break. These defensive efforts also saw Trinity committing far more offenses in the latter half due to their impatience in scoring their next try, in order to reach their usual target of 50.

However, the fact that Joes managed to restrict a formidable Trinity attack that comprises of superior infiltration skills to less than 30 points, underlines their defensive efforts that would be quite useful in their next games, where they would face sides of more or less comparable strengths. As a consolation for their efforts in the last half, Joes managed to breach one of the finest goal line defences in the League by scoring a converted try.