Strabane maintained their fine current form with a convincing league victory over Letterkenny at a wet and windy Strabane Academy pitch. Strabane immediately were on the attack, and after a series of drives eventually knocked on. Not to be denied, the pack took the scrum against the head and in a sign of things to come, letterkenny collapsed rather than let Strabane advance. The ref awarded a penalty, which Jeff mealiff duly slotted.
With their appetites now only whetted, Strabane continued to press and came close on a couple of occasions, but the defence eventually over-committed and the ball was passed to winger Davy rankin in acres of space. Once he had caught the ball he was smiling like a Cheshire cat as he knew he’d make it to the line and the large support cheered as he crossed for an unconverted score. Letterkenny now got into gear and began to move upfield, but after struggling to break down the home defence, centre Stephen “Soupy” Campbell intercepted a pass, and he just about had the extremely long legs to get to the line for another try and the score was 13-0. CLICK HERE for the ACTION SHOTSS!
The pack were now having a field day in the scrums and prevented letterkenny setting up any platform from this phase. A fine example was when they pushed the visitors back 10 metres and had been awarded a penalty, but the ref played a good advantage and scrum half Timmy Cummings fed soupy, who managed a miraculous offload to Davy rankin. With very little space to work in, Davy showed great feet and speed to leave the defence wondering where he had gone as he scampered in for another 5 points and halftime arrived with Strabane leading comfortably 18-0.
The second half was a bit disappointing as the conditions worsened and Strabane seemed to relax a little. A rare bit of letterkenny momentum was brutally halted by a ferocious greg Mitchell tackle on their number 8, who had to retire for treatment. This inexplicably led to uncontested scrums, where strabane had become totally dominant, and this always takes the sting from the game. Letterkenny fought manfully, and did manage to claw back 3 points from a penalty, but even after a ferocious assault on the home line, committed tackling and great team spirit eventually broke the siege and soupy was able to hack the ball clear and the ref blew the game up soon afterwards.
Strabane have now opened a 2 point gap over PSNI at the top of qualifying 3 and pushed letterkenny out to 3 points with games in hand on both rivals. Strabane still have room for improvement, with certain facets of play not going as well as coach Gibson would like, but they’re grinding out the wins, and that is what really counts.
