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| Ballina 1st XV (03) vs City Of Armagh 1st XV (25) |
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01st November 2009
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The long journey did nothing to dampen the drive of the visitors to Ballina Co Mayo. Early pressure with excellent recycling saw Armagh earn their way to the Ballina 22. But the first scrum determined the outcome of the match.
The solid line-outs and scrums were the building blocks of the Armagh game, especially with the cross field wind. It was in spite of the wind that Adam Gowing broke the dead lock with a well struck penalty. Good linking play followed from Ballina as they tried to get back into the game, but the Armagh forwards had other ideas with another solid scrum to get themselves back into the Ballina 22.
It was then that Armagh galvanised themselves and pushed over for and excellent try scored by Armagh stalwart Joe Clarke. Gowing duly slotted over to make the score a healthy 0-10.
But Ballina were not to be deterred from their game and continued to pressure the Armagh front line and it paid off, as the Ballina kicker shortened the deficit to 03-10.
But Ballina were obviously rattled by the scoreline and were losing their composure. This was typified by a blatant hight tackle on Johnny Allen. The referee had no choice left open to him, but to send the Ballina number 13 to the sin bin.
In this period of play with one man down, the Ballina team tried to cover themselves on all fronts and for some of the time they succeeded. Armagh could not capitalise on the overlap of men, until simple combining work saw Armagh move up the pitch towards the goal line. But it was only the excellent tackling of Allen again stopping the readvance of Ballina that lead to a solid passage of play.
The second half started as the first had ended with Armagh on the front foot and dominated the play in both the forwards and backs. Good handling in the adverse wind saw several reverses of play with the ball going between the two teams, but the final turnover relieved to pressure on Armagh and saw another excellent run from Eddie Irwin to score a well deserved try.
But Gowing could not convert the try with the wind picking up just at the wrong moment.
This was to be the last passage of play for Irwin as he was substituted for Johnny Steenson who moved to the full back position and Lester moved out to the wing.
Even with this change in personnel the Armagh team were steady in their progress up the field but it was halted by a Ballina penalty, which Gowing took cleanly to make the score 03-18 in favour of the visitors.
A double changeover for Ballina saw a shakeup in both sides and led to brilliant period of play which saw the Scrum half Matthew Wright over for the visitors third of the day. Gowing again stood up to take the kick and made the goal and the score line a healthy 25-03.
But the match was to be marred after this with an altercation on the Ballina 10m line. This unfortunate clash resulted in the sending off of both an Armagh and a Ballina player.
The highlight of this game was some excellent tackling by Peter Elliott which allowed a continuance of solid play and for the rest of the black line to play expansively.
The next game for the first fifteen sees them returning home to play Junior cup rugby against Belfast Harlequins. |
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