Hickey sees the tables turned on Con against Lansdowne
Daire Walsh
CORK CONSTITUTION coach Brian Hickey felt the ‘tables were turned’ on his side in the final of 15 minutes of their game against Lansdowne last Sunday afternoon, as they eventually suffered a 24-10 away defeat in Division 1A of the Ulster Bank League.
A 77th-minute try by former Con out-half Scott Deasy placed the outcome beyond doubt, and Hickey acknowledged that the Lansdowne defence were hard to break down in the final-quarter.
“We knew this was going to be a key game before the break. We’ve traditionally played this game in the final run of games, so it’s a bit unusual. I just thought the tables were turned on us a little bit in the last 10, 15 minutes.
“We needed to attack, and we were met by a very, very solid Lansdowne defence,” Hickey remarked.
“I think they just made us work very, very hard, and then they got the try that put them out of sight really. At that stage then we were looking at a losing bonus. I suppose it was disappointing, but I thought there was some positives in how we played as well.”
Indeed, Con were able to get some joy in the Lansdowne ’22’, with Ned Hodson and Kevin O’Byrne crossing the opposition whitewash in either half. However, Lansdowne responded on both occasions with scores of their own, and Hickey was disappointed that they couldn’t build momentum during these periods of the play.
“We kind of ended up putting ourselves under pressure then immediately after it [the tries] again, which was the disappointing aspect of it. Usually if you get the tries, as you say, you need to build on it and we didn’t in this case. Lansdowne were the ones who scored immediately after us on both occasions.”
With two wins and two defeats from four games to date, Con find themselves fifth in the league table ahead of a three-week break in competitive fare.
Like Terenure College (who claimed a 39-35 victory over Con on September 23), Lansdowne have made an unbeaten start to the campaign, and Hickey expects them to challenge strongly for top honours.
“I would have admired Lansdowne.
“They’re a very well coached side, they’ve a lot of very good players. They can play a couple of different types of game. A lot of power and a lot of pace. Lansdowne will always be up there.
“It really is the first game this year that we’ve come up against that degree of power and pace. We’ll have to just go away and re-assess how we managed it,” Hickey added.