Strabane travelled to Armoy for the eagerly anticipated top of the table clash, the winner of which would take a clear two point lead in the league. As the score may suggest it was a case of defences on top and a very frustrating day for the Strabane men. Armoy had a clear game plan which was to smother and slow down Strabane ball by whichever means necessary, if it was legal or not seemed to be a side issue. Strabane started well enough with Maxi Pinning back Armoy in their own 22 until after the ball had been spread through the backs, the ball mysteriously squirted out of the Strabane ruck and was kicked almost the length of the field by the Armoy Winger only for a super covering tackle by Chris Holden. The Armoy support wasn’t far away and with a couple of phases of quick play they pushed their way through the Strabane defence for the only try of the game. Both teams battled out the rest of the half sharing possession and territory in equal amounts with the half time score 5-0 to Armoy.
Strabane fought for everything in the second half and clawed back three points from the boot of Maxi and then took the lead with a thumping penalty from the half way line again by Maxi. Armoy continued to take full advantage of the referee’s poor eye sight and disrupt all Strabane’s attempts to get any momentum into their play and were awarded a penalty of their own which put them back in the lead 8-6. This was unfortunately the final score to the delight of the on looking Armoy support.
This was to be a tough day at the office with the pack been frustrated by the large wylie Armoy forwards and our backline stuttering under pressure. Whilst our coach has tried hard to implement the new rules of the game over the past couple of years to make us a more disciplined side, he needn’t have bothered for this game as Armoy don’t seem to be on the IRFU mailing list when it comes to rule changes. In fact what was required on Saturday would have been six John Graham’s and a couple of Bob Dillon’s.
This however is only a blip and we will be very ready for their return to Strabane with title ambitions still very much on our minds.
