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Londonderry makes it three straight over Pinkerton

Friday, September, 25 By Jeff Hamrick

LONDONDERRY – There wasn’t the typical 5,000 frenzied fans surrounding the battlefield.

But football was played.

The event was missing the yearly union between two of New England’s best marching bands, combining with more than 200 instruments for a spine-chilling rendition of the national anthem.

But football was played.

The Mack Plaque rivalry between border-town adversaries went off for the 38th consecutive year Friday night and it appears Londonderry is getting the hang of the conflict.

One year after snapping a 22-game losing streak to Pinkerton, the defending state-champion Lancers beat the Astros for the third straight time 23-14, and it was half of a familiar name that did the bulk of the damage.

After watching graduated brother Jake quarterback Londonderry to a pair of victories over Pinkerton last season, Dylan McEachern took over the reins and ran for 217 yards and a touchdown and added 118 yards and another score through the air.

“I knew if my brother could do it, I could do it,” McEachern said after his stellar debut. “I’ll definitely be calling him up tonight. Yesterday, we face timed and talked about it. He just told me to stay confident, and if I do a bad play to let it go and move on to the next play. They were good tips. We talked about keeping the streak going, so I used that for fire.”

Despite the limited practice time this season, McEachern settled in early with the run-option, blasting 65 yards on the Lancers’ third play from scrimmage.

On the next possession, the senior signal caller calmy guided the offense 69 yards on 13 plays before connecting with Colby Ramshaw on a 16-yard scoring pass. Zach Fawcett’s kick made the score 13-0 less than two minutes into the second quarter.

“Outside his fumble, he played extremely well,” Londonderry coach Jimmy Lauzon said of his new quarterback, who guided four scoring drives of 68 yards or longer. “The quarterbacks work really, really hard here the whole offseason. There are no breaks. (The hard work) is showing, and hopefully, he can keep it up. I’m proud of him.”

Pinkerton, which also dropped a quarterfinal match to the Lancers last year, responded with a couple scoring drives of its own to grab a 14-13 lead with 4:55 left before intermission.

Fullback Evan Wilson did the damage, finishing the possessions with a 41-yard scoring run and a 1-yard touchdown plunge. He added the two-point conversion after the second for a lead that didn’t last long as Fawcett connected on a 26-yard field goal with 13 ticks left in the opening half.

While those two scoring drives combined for 109 yards, the Astros accumulated only 47 more yards on their other seven possessions.

“My concerns were conditioning, and I have to say that came to fruition,” Pinkerton coach Brian O’Reilly said after the Astros second consecutive season-opening loss. “Beyond that, I didn’t think we were very good on offense. I know we weren’t very good on offense, and we couldn’t get them off the field on defense. We have to not make mistakes.”

Winners of 13 straight, Londonderry closed the scoring early in the fourth when Hayden Austen capped a convincing 12-play, 80-yard drive on a 1-yard plunge.

Both coaches agreed preparing for an abbreviated five-game regular-season schedule was challenging.

“It wasn’t harder,” O’Reilly said. “It’s very different with a shorter season, but it’s not any harder. Nobody ever starts out the beginning of the year on all cylinders, and we’re certainly not there yet. But (Londonderry) looked pretty good at it, obviously.”

The Lancers finished with 379 yards of total offense to Pinkerton’s 156 while running 30 more plays from scrimmage.

“This was such a different preseason and we’re a different offense,” said Lauzon, whose squad outscored Pinkerton last year by a combined 87-27. “We spent the offseason trying to figure out the best way to succeed. We knew we couldn’t just run the same thing every year, so I think that caught Pinkerton by surprise more than anything.”

Despite losing the opener in a short season, the Astros will have time to mature and improve.

“The unusual thing about this year is that it’s an open tournament in the end,” O’Reilly said. “So, unless they change the rules, we’re going to be in the playoffs in the end as is everybody else. So, what matters is how we’re playing four weeks from now.”