Coleraine 2s won a hard fought contest on Saturday against a tough Ballyclare outfit, out-muscling them by 4 tries to one. Coleraine showed just a couple of changes from last week and perhaps after last week’s super team performance some complacency led to a fragmented first half display, but managed to put a few phases together in the second half to pull away as worthy winners.
Playing with the prevailing wind in the first half, Coleraine kicked too much and gave away possession to Ballyclare, who ran the ball back well and spent long periods of time in the Coleraine half. Coleraine opened the scoring with a Cameron Jinx penalty after 12 minutes when Ballyclare were pinged for not releasing in the tackle. After soaking up some Ballyclare pressure, Coleraine scored the opening try after centre Colin McNay scythed down the left wing before giving the ball inside to Jinx who was on hand to perform a circus juggling act before dotting the ball between the sticks. Ballyclare scored shortly after, when they overturned a 5m Coleraine scrum and after a couple of rucks spread the wall wide to crash over the whitewash, closing the gap to 10-5. The rest of the half was rather disjointed with penalties, wasted opportunities and generally uninteresting play.
Turning to play into the wind, Coleraine knew they would have to play with ball in hand more, and were able to so extremely effectively and played like a completely different team. This entailed setting up some proper phases, pulling in the Ballyclare forwards, before using the backs which was probably a better game-plan than ‘boot-the-ball-down-the-park’ which was awful. First try of the half was scored by winger Colin Brown, who finished brilliantly in the left corner beating at least 3 Ballyclare defenders after some excellent handling skills by the Coleraine back line. Jinx jinked over the conversion from the touchline. McNay had a few more barn-storming runs through the centre, leaving bodies of Ballyclare defenders in his wake, but Coleraine were unable to capitalise as they blew a 7 on 1 overlap only ten metres from the Ballyclare line. Coleraine’s third try was scored by Ronnie Caskey, just rewards after a superb performance, with great work rate and galloping his way through the Ballyclare defence numerous times. Final try of the day was scored after hooker Stuart Evans sniped round the blind side of a ruck before an overhead basketball pass into the grateful hands of second row Ryan Gibson.
Good action all round (once the second half started) and another enjoyable day at the club for Coleraine. Next up for the 2s is defending league champions Ballynahinch 3s at home and a game that could go a long way to deciding the outcome of the league even at this early stage.
Coleraine 2XV: Paul Shiels, Stevie Callaghan, Colin McNay, John McClelland, Jet Fighter, Cameron Jinx, Peter Archiebald, Arnie Hogg, Stuart Evans, Adrain Nevin, Willie Chestnutt, Ryan Gibson, Harry Tate,
