Royal Irish defeated St. Edward 17-9 over the weekend in a game that said different things to the different coaches.

For St. Edward Coach Tom Cleary, the performance was a step forward after a 15-0 loss to the same Royal Irish team a week ago in the Lindenwood Tournament. St. Edward lost a couple of players to injury in that tournament but rebounded.

Jack Bradfield, as usual, played a strong game, and added a penalty goal for St. Edward. Conor Forestal added two penalty goals and also played a good game, while newcomer and former football player Pat Bebie was a force on attack. Loosehead prop Joelle Keeley also looked good.

“For us to go from 15-0 to 17-9 was an improvement,” said Cleary. “We want to play these good teams and challenge ourselves and get more competitive. We corrected some of our mistakes and fixed some of our bad habits from the first game against them. Royal Irish run really well but I was happy with how our guys played defensively.”

For Royal Irish Head Coach Scott Peterson, the game didn’t feel so good.

“We played poorly,” said Peterson. “St. Edward played tough and I think our team was probably overconfident after last weekend. Once we settled down in the last 15, our forwards began to apply pressure and we got a couple of tries.”

Also bad news for Royal Irish was that flyhalf David Hannon went down with an injury. Royal Irish were also playing without prop Jonas Petrakopoulos. But Peterson will be more concerned with the infractions that led to six kickable penalty attempts. St. Edward was good only three.