Lincoln Park 17 Cincinnati 72
There are defeats you can live with, and defeats that expose you. Sunday's contest at Lincoln Park fell emphatically into the second category — a game that started with genuine promise, flickered with individual brilliance, then was swept away in a second-half deluge that left the scoreboard reading like a misprint. Cincinnati Wolfhounds, 72-17. Read it twice if you must.
For the opening quarter, Park were the better side. Bricteaux came agonisingly close to a line break that would have opened the Wolfhounds up entirely, the ball teasing rather than arriving. Quinn looked menacing every time it reached the right wing — a channel Park rightly targeted — and in the pack, Driscoll and Anderson brought exactly the kind of confrontational carrying that sets a platform. The problem, as so often, was the platform's foundations.
The set piece creaked. A scrum lost against the head. Lineout ball compromised by smart Wolfhound jumpers who read the calls well enough to cause repeated disruption. Those are the sort of details that separate a good team from one still finding itself, and Cincinnati knew exactly which buttons to press.
"McCann, two weeks into retirement, was apparently unmoved by the occasion of his own farewell — which is to say he jinked his way over for a try like a man who had never heard the word 'quit.'"
Park did score first, and it was worthy of any highlights reel. Chrisos' grubber was the creative spark; Finnegan's instinctive flick-up the moment of inspiration; Cooley's dive the full stop. Clinical. Clever. It suggested a team capable of manufacturing something from nothing.
But then Wolfhounds arrived at the game. A series of brutal picks close to the line brought them back into it on the half hour. Then — and this is where the afternoon turned — two tries in the final four minutes of the half, the first from an inside centre run of the diagonal, long and weaving and quite frankly beautiful. Park went in at the break trailing 7-21, and the mathematics of recovery were always going to be brutal.
The second half became a different kind of exercise — part damage limitation, part experimentation. Park rotated heavily, as they should at this stage of the spring season, trying combinations and getting minutes into legs. The Wolfhounds, cohesive and untroubled, were happy to oblige. Their young tighthead was a revelation: a barnstorming, bullocking performance that should have coaches across the division taking notes.
Park were not entirely without their moments. Suladze, introduced from the bench, continued the form that is making him impossible to ignore — two steals at the breakdown and a couple of offloads that drew genuine applause. And when Wolfhounds' tighthead came thundering once more, it was Schones who met him with a chop tackle of real quality — the tackle of the day, low and precise and technically excellent.
The consolation scores, at least, arrived with some style. McCann, two weeks into what had apparently been a retirement, was unmoved by the gravity of the occasion — he jinked through a gap, left two defenders clutching at air, and dotted down like a man who had never heard the word 'quit.' And Henneberry found the corner late on to give the scoreline a fraction more dignity.
The visitors deserved their win; that much is beyond argument. But Park are in the business of building right now, not polishing. There were enough individual performances here — Suladze's larceny, Quinn's menace, Anderson and Driscoll's front-foot intent — to suggest the autumn campaign is not a pipe dream. The set piece wants work. The discipline in the final minutes of the first half was costly. These are fixable things. They had better be.
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