Shannon head coach Tom Hayes not getting carried away with flying start to the campaign

Shannon head coach Tom Hayes has had a bright start in his first full season as an AIL head coach with his side recording five wins from five.

The Parish side maintained their position at the top of the division with a hard-fought derby win over UL Bohemian at Thomond Park over the weekend.

Hayes was brought in as forwards coach at the beginning of last season, before being called on to take over from Marcus Horan at the helm midway through the season, as Shannon languished at the bottom of the 1B table.

Win, lose or draw, the former Exeter Chiefs captain never seems to get too excited about the outcome. Considering the poor start that Shannon had last year, the humble Cappamore native has done an outstanding job so far, as he attempts to bring the AIL’s most successful club back to the big stage.

“It’s certainly been a lot better and we feel a lot more positive. We’ll try and keep building on it and won’t get carried away with ourselves. We’ve got, what I wouldn’t necessarily call a surprise package but they’ve obviously just been promoted, Banbridge, next week. They certainly haven’t been rolling over or being apologetic about being in this division, their going hammer and tongs for it, so we have a game on our hands.”

Shannon faced into arguably their most difficult fixture so far, this season as they faced Limerick rivals UL Bohs at Thomond Park at the weekend. The Red Robins haven’t been in the best of form this season but form tends to go out the window under the Friday night lights on derby day.

Hayes’ charges recorded a 27-22 win on the night, holding out for a precious win despite their failure to register any second half points.

One of many for Conor Fitz last night for @Shannon_RFC pic.twitter.com/ACHKY0RwPr

— Luke Liddy (@LOLIDDY2489) October 28, 2017

Shannon looked almost out of sight in the first half as they took a 27-10 lead into the break, Conor Fitzgerald claiming 17 of those points from the boot.

“We managed to dig ourselves out of it (in the second half). Definite credit to Bohs they got themselves back into the game in the second half. It’s not to take all credit away from them that we gave them a way back in, they forced their way back in. They came at us fairly strong with their maul and they squeezed penalties out of us as you’d expect them to do but thankfully we managed to hold on.”

UL Bohs turned the game on it’s head in the second half though as they scored two tries unanswered through Mike Mullaly and James Ryan to take the score back to 27-22.

James Ryan try for @ulbohemianrfc on Friday. pic.twitter.com/o8AEbS4EkZ

— Luke Liddy (@LOLIDDY2489) October 30, 2017

Head coach Christy Neilan was delighted with his sides fight in the second half but says they left themselves too much to do in forty minutes.

“We put in a huge performance, we came back in the second half and probably could have won the game but we gave ourselves too much work in the first half. We gave up two easy scores and our discipline was poor, we gave up six or seven penalties and we got a bin in the first half. I said it inside in the changing room, Shannon are top of the league and there’s a few points in a game between them and us, so that’s the standard we’re at and that’s what we need to take forward.”

There was controversy late on in the game as the official had confirmed incorrectly that the score was 24-22 to Shannon, this lead to the decision for fly-half Robbie Bourke to have a kick at goal in the last five minutes – which he subsequently missed.