Could The Tigers Get It Done?
Sunshine, warmth, and the reigning premiers the Edinburgh Bloods rolling into town for our much anticipated ‘aussie rules’ clash. The Tigers are a different outfit to last years team, but the question remained: Could we come away with a win?
And – unfortunately - the short answer was to be ‘no’, with the Bloods running out 67 point winners (21.19. 145 vs 11.12. 78).
Bummer!
But the Bloods are a classy outfit, and from the very start of the game they were switched on and full of run, whilst the Tigers seemed to take a bit of time to find their feet and work their way into the game.
Maybe it was the heat? Maybe it was fitness? And maybe it was just the fact that the Bloods play really well together as a team and always seemed to be able to find an open team mate with their kicking and handballing skills, meaning that more often than not the Tigers found themselves chasing an opponent with the ball, as opposed to being able to dictate the nature of play on their own terms?
The bottom line? The Bloods were definitely the better team, and they reminded us of the benchmark in terms of quality of play that we are going to need to emulate if we are to be serious challengers for the premiership in 2024.
But there were Tiger positives. First gamer Sean Conneely was fantastic with his efforts all day, Colum Donaghy was great in the ruck, and Paddy Blain was ferocious all day in his attack on the ball.
Build on all of that and there is much to look forward to, but for now we recover, lick our wounds, get to work on a few things at training this Wednesday night, and be ready to bounce back when we host Bloods 2 at home again this coming Saturday (18/5) at GSA starting at 2pm.
Carn the Tiges!