02s come up short in Carrick by Andy Borthwick
Strong defence but not enough point on the board.
The 2s kicked off in Carrick looking to stop a poor run of form that has seen them snatch defeat from winnable situations on more than one occasion.
This week was to prove much the same. After letting in two soft tries initially, Ballymoney’s defence stood firm in the face of sustained pressure from a Carrick side that seemed bolstered by some of their 1st XV squad who were in need of game time.
Neal Mulholland can count himself doubly unlucky this time, a first half charge down just getting away, and a clear score in the second half disallowed.
Otherwise, the defence for most of the game was good, but a better result is sorely needed next week, at home to Grosvenor.
Ballymoney Defeat Instonian’s Seahorses by Uel McDowell
Superb Team Performance produces a great result
On Sat 12 Oct the Ballymoney Under 17s travelled to Shaw’s Bridge to play Instonians’ Seahorses in a friendly fixture.
In great playing conditions the Under 17s played their best rugby of the season so far. Their line out play and scrummaging was of a very high standard which produced a lot of ball for the adventurous backs to play with throughout the game.
This enabled Gary Pattinson to score an excellent first try but the conversion was missed. Five minutes later the backs attacked the Instonians defence again and the ball was passed to the fast winger Tommy McMullan who outpaced the covering defence to score in the corner. Again the conversion was missed.
Another try was to follow when Andrew Young chased up his own kick, tackled the Instonians’ fullback and picked up the ball to score. Again the conversion was missed. Two minutes later the same player scored again when he found a gap in the Instonians’ back line to score but the conversion was missed.
Just before halftime scrumhalf Chris Campbell scored another good try following good running by Tommy McMullan. The conversion was missed leaving the halftime score at 25-0 in favour of the Ballymoney lads.
The team appeared to have a nap at the start of the second half and this led to Instonians scoring a fine try which was converted when their winger found space on the blindside to run in between the posts.
After a brief talking to the team by Captain Ben Graham, centre Aaron Brown broke through the Instonians’ defence to score after excellent line running by outside centre Steven Douglas, who was causing the Instonians’ defence major problems throughout the game.
The conversion was missed. Steven Douglas then set up Chris Campbell for his second try and Andrew Young finished the scoring with an opportunist try when the Instonians’ winger was tackled on the line and dropped the ball. However, both conversions were missed leaving the final score 40 points to 7 to Ballymoney.
All the players played their part in this fine win.
This was a great all round performance by the Under 17s. It would be hard to pick out an individual as all players excelled themselves and if they continue to play this way then this will be quite an outstanding Ballymoney Under 17s team, which is still missing several injured team members.
Man of the match was Steven Douglas.
