Ophir 2 10 – 24 Belfast Harlequins
Festive win eases pressure on 4th XV management
by Martin Malseed
Ophir forsake League points
A turbulent December for the 4th XV with two narrow defeats to Malone 5th XV saw the month conclude with a magnificent team performance against a gutsy Ophir2s.
Ophir as a club are producing great results so this post Xmas match was going to be a challenge .Planning had been as usual meticulous as we recruited players for the 3rd XV and Christmas week revealed some really
flaky reasons for not playing.(Sore tummies ,ear infections and charity soccer matches being a few )
Anyway the fifteen men who crossed the whitewash at Ophir on a wintery breezy day will be thanked for their dedication and effort.
Ophir in warming up were doing things called drills while we were familiarising ourselves with line outs and back moves from the manual whilst trying to avoid frostbite.
Ophir resorted to form which our scouts had identified by keeping the ball in the hands of their huge mature pack . This produced a try for them in first few minutes.
Quickly Harlequins countered and with some intelligent back play James Mahon scored a great try far out to bring it to 5 all.
Calamity struck when winger Patton’s call of ” offside Flanker ” was misheard by the ref and produced a yellow card consigning Ross to ten minutes in the freezing tundra.
As so often the 4th XV have trained to cope with a player down and kept the 10 minute spell at zero all.
Meanwhile with scrum after scrum causing the well fed Ophir front five to tire Quins started to really up the intensity.
Ophir pressure in the red zone ended with a 40 yard dash by David Law ( stopping on the pitch en route to Aldergrove to catch a 5pm flight) .This literally changed the game as Quins spent the rest of day in Ophir half.
Colm at no 10 is now a challenger to our three other outhalf stars and scored a super try for Jack Fog to convert just about .5-12 now and half time.
Second half saw an epic try from Ross after some clever work by the back line.
Colm then got another and Jack managed to squeeze over the conversion .
So Quins were now up 24-5 and started to throw it about and take control .One attacking glitch let Ophir score from far out as the Quin’s defence were ball chasing.
The game soon ended a good natured game against a gutsy Ophir side who represented all that is good in minor rugby.
