NW Woodsmen 28 - Lincoln Park RFC D3 73

Not even a long, weaving run from the Woodsmen number eight in the dying seconds, a late flourish of defiance from a beaten side, could dim the lustre of what Lincoln Park had produced. All season, the line between a narrow defeat and a famous victory had been drawn in the smallest of strokes: a pass a fraction behind the runner, a decision a heartbeat too late. On this last afternoon, those strokes were drawn with a steady hand. Park, at long last, were spot on.

The captain falls; the side does not

The afternoon might have taken a darker turn when captain Olander left the field in the first half with a shoulder injury. A lesser team might have faltered, searching for its voice. Park did not skip a beat. Clarke stepped in from twelve to assume the fly-half's burden, distributing with composure and kicking with a cool authority that yielded nine conversions from eleven attempts. It was a seamless succession, the mark of a side whose confidence no longer rests on any single pair of shoulders.

A hesitant overture, then the storm

The opening movements gave little warning of the symphony to come. Park led only 14-7 until the thirtieth minute, a scoreline that spoke of a contest in the balance. Then, in the space of ten minutes, the balance was upended. Four tries before the interval turned the game from a skirmish into a rout. Mazy, spotting acres on the weak side, angled over; Loomis burst through the heart of the defence from forty yards, as if the Woodsmen line were merely a rumour; and Paschal and Daley each added their names to the scoresheet as the visitors' rugby flowed with a kind of unhurried inevitability.

Daley, and the hands that carried the day

It was Daley who gave the midfield its muscle and the afternoon its headline, completing a hat-trick of tries that showed his handling to be every bit the equal of his power. Two of those scores were born of quick hands and sharper instincts: one from gathering a low pass off the bootlaces, the other from scooping up a Woodsmen fumble and never looking back.

Up front, the scrum creaked at times, but the props more than compensated in the loose. Modev and Dollins carried with relish, and Modev in particular revealed a touch of velvet beneath the heft, a series of perfectly weighted tip passes from the point of the pod that unlocked the defence time and again.

Two portraits in work and craft

Paschal delivered his finest performance in a Park jersey, hunting for space from his own right wing and tackling with the tireless devotion of a man determined to hold the line single-handed, one hit following another in an unbroken chain. At scrumhalf, Nara was at his slippery best, conducting those around him and probing the fringes of the breakdown for a succession of half-breaks that left the Woodsmen forever a step behind.

A brief rally, then the final curtain

The Woodsmen mustered a mini-comeback early in the second half, a brief and gallant flicker, but Park regathered their composure and extinguished any hope of an upset. Tommy Lyons, to his own evident astonishment, summoned a rare burst of pace down the right touchline to score from forty yards. Daley completed his hat-trick, and Leist peeled from a lineout maul to cut inside a despairing defender and touch down, a fitting punctuation mark to the afternoon.

The verdict

Many others deserve a mention in a performance as fine as this, a fitting way to bring the curtain down on the season. It has been a campaign in which any doubts about Park's place in the higher division were quietly, and then loudly, expelled: three defeats, each in a contest they were never out of, and two big victories to show what this side can do when everything falls into place. They arrived in D3 as the newcomers. They leave it as a team that belongs.

Lincoln Park RFC D2 41 Chicago Blaze 31 

When a season hinges on a single result, the temptation is to tighten up. Lincoln Park did precisely the opposite. Needing a win to keep their playoff hopes alive, Park produced what was perhaps their most rounded and complete performance of the campaign, and even two late Blaze scores that made the final margin look closer than the contest ever felt could not obscure the quality of what had gone before.

A tight opening, then eight minutes of mayhem

For the first half hour, there was little to separate the sides. At 7-7, with Blaze competing hard and Park yet to find their full rhythm, there was a flicker of the familiar fear that a tight game might once again slip away from them. What followed settled the matter. In a devastating eight-minute spell, Park scored four tries and turned a contest into a procession.

At the heart of it was Cooley. The inside centre was the star of the first half, repeatedly timing his runs to perfection to open up the middle of the Blaze defensive line, and he finished the half with a hat-trick: the opener that had levelled things at 7-7, and two more in that blistering burst. His afternoon was only slightly marred by a yellow card for a tip tackle, a lapse that Park survived without damage thanks to the cushion they had already built.

Robinson added a score from close range, diving over after the pack had done the hard work, and Scott completed the first-half rout by scorching down the right wing after Glavin's half-break had broken the line. By the interval, Park led 31-7, and the game was, to all intents and purposes, decided.

Platform and polish

Behind the headline tries sat a performance of real substance. Jahner gave Park go-forward ball throughout with frequent surges from the back of the scrum, while Wilkinson was solid at fullback, ensuring that any Blaze kick was returned off his own boot with interest.

Park's defence was resolute whenever Blaze threatened, making tackle after tackle, often backed up close to their own try line, and never allowing the visitors a sustained period of momentum. Bricteux was, as is so often the case, a turnover machine, quick to the jackal whenever the ball was available and a constant source of frustration for Blaze's attempts to build phases.

Up front, Melody was strong in the scrum, winning at least one penalty, and also offered a glimpse of his running support lines, though he appeared a little perturbed at the prospect that he might have to carry the ball half the length of the field.

The second half: control and flourish

Park added two more tries after the break. Scott finished from a Jahner pass, and Finnegan completed a well-worked counter-attack down the left wing after Blaze attempted a quick kickoff in their urgency to fight back, a gamble that backfired spectacularly and handed Park yet another scoring chance.

Late tries from Blaze did close the scoreline, and the margin will look narrower in the record books than it felt on the field. The result, however, was never in doubt.

The verdict

A must-win game, answered with a must-watch performance. Park are now on a bye and await confirmation of their potential playoff opponents, and whoever they draw will know that this is a side that has found its best form at precisely the right moment.

Chicago Lions 17 - Lincoln Park RFC D2 21

There will have been plenty of head-scratching on the Park touchline in the days before this one over the makeup of the bench, and by the final whistle those decisions had been thoroughly vindicated. It was the substitutes who supplied the energy and the crucial moments that ultimately dragged Park over the line in a contest that went right down to the wire.

A bright start, undone by its own success

Park began the afternoon very much in control, stringing together phase after phase and sticking rigidly to their structure through long spells of possession. In hindsight, it proved something of a false dawn — as the game wore on, handling errors began to creep in with greater frequency, a reminder that territory and phase count mean little without the composure to finish what they set up.

That early platform did produce the opening score, however, Cooley finishing from close range after nine minutes to get Park on the board. Up front, the front row of Melody, Leyman and, in particular, Robinson ran hard throughout and racked up carry after carry, while Bricteux was his usual menace at the breakdown, seeming to take up permanent residence over the ball whenever the faintest sniff of a turnover presented itself.

Park's second try was pure opportunism. Jahner charged down an attempted clearance kick deep in Lions territory and, quick enough to react before anyone in grey could recover, scooped up the loose ball to score under the posts.

A shaky end to the half

From a position of real control, though, Park stumbled towards the break, conceding two tries in quick succession late in the first half. Only missed conversions from the Lions kept the arithmetic in Park's favour, the visitors clinging to a four-point lead at the interval that, on the balance of that closing spell, felt more fortunate than deserved.

Lions edge ahead, the game turns attritional

The Lions duly completed the turnaround eleven minutes into the second half, finishing off a long break down the right when their forwards took over with a series of short, punishing carries to force their way over. From there the contest became a grinding, attritional affair, with neither side able to trouble the scoreboard for a long stretch. Park came closest through Cooley, a scintillating break that promised a try of real quality before a knock-on, reaching for the line, denied him at the very last.

The bench turns the tide

It was in this stalemate that Park's substitutes began to earn their inclusion. Rottiers came on and set about scything down Lions runner after Lions runner, while Murphy, introduced at tighthead, showed off hands as reliable as his scrummaging, stealing two Lions lineouts and picking off an interception besides. That interception arrived soon after a sliced Park penalty that had  threatened for a moment to be the mistake that finally killed off any hope of a comeback.

A finish worth the wait

Instead, Park found one more twist. A ruck won wide on the left gave Chrisos the platform to find Finnegan storming onto the ball, and the fullback crashed over under the posts to restore the lead in the closing stages. From the restart, Park's forwards simply took control, rumbling through phase after phase for the best part of two minutes to see the clock, and the game, out.

The verdict

A narrow win, and far from a flawless one, but a victory earned in the truest sense — through composure under pressure, smart use of the bench, and no shortage of heart when the contest threatened to slip away. Park will look back on the handling lapses and the concessions either side of half-time with some frustration, but the character shown to close the game out will matter far more in the long run.

CRC Condors 14 Lincoln Park RFC D2 52

A week after tasting defeat, Park responded in the manner any coach would demand, putting more than fifty points on Condors in a performance built on the back of a rampant back row. And yet the most telling detail of the afternoon may be this: a team can rack up 52 points and still walk off sensing there was more in the tank. That, as much as the scoreline itself, is the clearest evidence yet of the progress this Park side is making.

A fast start disrupted

The platform was laid early, Bricteux touching down after just twelve minutes, the first of three on the day, finishing off a break started by Jahner. It set the tone for a first quarter in which Park's back row simply could not be stopped, with flankers Laux and Bricteux combining for five tries between them over the course of the afternoon and involved in the buildup to several more besides. Being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time is fast becoming the calling card of that pairing.

Two tries from Laux in that opening spell had Park 19-0 to the good by the end of the first quarter, a lead that threatened to run away from Condors entirely. But rugby has a habit of punishing complacency, and Park stuttered just as the game looked to be running away, Condors finding a try of their own during a spell with Jahner in the sin bin for what was adjudged a no-wrap tackle taken too low.

Rhythm restored after the break

Whatever wobble crept in before half-time, it did not survive the interval. Park found their rhythm again in the second half and set about reasserting the dominance of the first quarter. Laux, having done the finishing early on, turned provider himself to set up Glavin, while his fellow second-row partner Driscoll added a try of his own from short range as Park's forwards took an ever-tightening grip on the contest. Bricteux was not finished either, adding two further tries to the one he had opened the scoring with, taking his own personal tally to three for the afternoon.

The finishing touches

Finnegan rounded out the scoring late on, finishing wide on the right wing for a score that, for once, belonged to the backs rather than the forwards who had so thoroughly dominated the day. The kicking tee, meanwhile, was in the hands of Jonny Wilkinson, running the show from scrumhalf and making his full debut after a substitute's cameo the week before. His conversions kept ticking over with real composure for a player so new to the shirt. 

The verdict

Not a flawless performance — the sin-bin lapse and the mid-game stutter will be picked over at training — but this was nonetheless another afternoon that speaks to the growing confidence coursing through this Park side. To put more than fifty points on a side and still feel there was another gear available is precisely the position a coach wants his team in as the season progresses. Whatever wobbles remain to be ironed out, this is a team that keeps finding new ways to win, and finding them more emphatically each time.

CRC Silverbacks 32 Lincoln Park RFC D3 20

An early ten o'clock kickoff and a wet morning that made every catch and pass that little bit harder set the scene for another instalment in what is fast becoming a familiar story for this Park side at their new level — a performance full of competitive spirit, undone once again by the smallest of margins. Close games are becoming something of a theme, and once more Park will leave the field with plenty to admire in the effort but no win to show for it.

Silverbacks find the width

In the conditions, it was Silverbacks who adapted the better, finding space in the wide channels with well-timed passing that repeatedly stretched Park's defensive line. Their short running lines just off the ball carrier were a particular source of trouble, a constant thread of attack that Park struggled to contain fully even when they had numbers back.

A defence that refused to yield

And yet, for all that, it would be wrong to characterise this as a defensive collapse. Far from it — Park's defence was stellar for long periods, often starved of the ball and forced to make tackle after tackle simply to stay in the contest, and rise to that challenge they largely did. Malen was a physical presence on his debut in the centres, while Panzica, shifted back into the back row after a stint at hooker, produced the kind of textbook low tackling that suggested the move suits him. Karris, meanwhile, was in his usual industrious form, this time doing his damage from number eight rather than his more familiar berth.

Decision-making the difference

Where the game was lost, more than in the wet conditions or in Silverbacks' width out wide, was in Park's own execution with ball in hand. Too often when Park did have opportunity to attack, the support simply was not there for the man making the half-break, and on more than one occasion the wrong call was made between offloading and taking the contact — small errors, individually, but the sort that a side chasing results at this level cannot afford to keep making.

There was no shortage of individual quality trying to paper over those cracks. Alcantara was a genuine force with ball in hand, proof that stature counts for little when strength and spirit are in such abundant supply — the prop was regularly seen dragging multiple tacklers along with him rather than being stopped by any one of them. Off the bench, Slattery offered a glimpse of what he can bring, his clever running conjuring space where little appeared to exist.

The verdict

There was little missing here in determination or character — Park competed with the Silverbacks throughout a difficult, wet contest and were seldom, if ever, out of the game. What is missing, and what these narrow defeats keep underlining, is the margin for error at this level. Execution and decision-making need to be close to flawless to turn performances like this into results, and until that final layer of polish arrives, afternoons like this one will keep repeating themselves.