On a nice day at Lido beach NYM got the Long Island monkey off their back but then played down to the level of D2 Union to go out on points difference. Read on for the report...

Match Report: Long Island Tournament

May 13^th 2006, Lido Beach.

Game 1 Score: NYM 25 – Long Island 12

NYM opened the tournament, playing holders Long Island who beat us in the final last year. Despite the early start and going down by a try NYM showed great tenacity and courage to pull the game back and finally beat Long Island for the first time in a while. Both teams settled into their patterns early. Long Island liked to move it through their forwards and maul the ball, while NYM preferred runners of the rucks and spreading it to the backs. Long Island scored first though after the ball broke back across the flow of the game from left to right. The NYM players stopped twice, first for what they thought was a knock on and then for a foot in touch. However, neither were given and that allowed the LI fullback the space he needed to score. NYM were able to pull a score back though and in the second half Eddie Cullen scored a try of his own and also made the break down the right that put Eastman into the corner to seal the game despite LI getting a try back.

Team: 1. Matt Beckley, 2. Matt Persanis, 3. Ben Whitney, 4. Scott Crafton, 5. Gabriel Fuoco, 6. Michael Toth, 7. John Yuhas, 8. Matt Novitzky, 9. Ed Brydon, 10. Matt Smith, 11. Brian Eastman, 12. Brian Fitzgerald (captain), 13. Eddie Cullen, 14. Danny Sonon, 15. Richie Richardson.

Game 2 Score: NYM 3 – Union 18

Long Island's win against Union put NYM in poll position to go through top of the group. However, against Union, NYM played a much more subdued match and never really got into their stride. Uncharacteristic mistakes were made and no-one managed to put some significant go forward into the game. Union were able to out muscle us in the more broken areas and managed to punch in two tries. This meant we went out of the tournament on points difference.

Team: 1. Dave Levine (Mike Annicelli), 2. Nick “The Greek” Mastrogeorgiou, 3. Brian Tyler, 4. Scott Crafton, 5. Gabriel Fuoco (Ben Whitney), 6. Pete Smith, 7. Mike Toth, 8. Matt Beckley, 9. Ed Brydon (Matt Smith), 10. Kevin Burke, 11. Luca Loguercio, 12. Brian Fitzgerald, 13. Duncan Heilbronn, 14. Bill Ezzo (Tom Lorenzen), 15. Pat Schaal.

Old Blue beat Long Island in the final – clearly we could and should have been there to contest that!