Banbridge Academy Firsts travelled to Carrickfergus Grammar School on Saturday morning and returned home with a 17-12 victory. In a lack-lustre performance in which the locals were inclined to give possession away too easily, the side, nonetheless, showed admirable determination to claim victory.
\nThe Academy took the lead with a well-worked Michael Runciman try. Good handling by the backs created the space for the full back to touch down in the corner. This was then followed by a second Bann try when a series of \u201cpick and drives\u201d led to open-side flanker Andrew McConnell going over. Out-half Chris Craig added the extra points to open a 12-0 lead for the locals.
\nCarrick fought back though and finished a period of pressure on the Bann line by taking a scrum against the head five metres out and touching down to leave the half-time score at 12-5 to Bann.
\nThe second half began in a similarly scrappy fashion with Carrick enjoying the territorial advantage. This led to an equalising converted try midway through the half to tie things up at 12-12. Bann though were not to be denied the win and blind-side flanker Bradley Martin drove over by the right-hand corner flag with some seven minutes remaining.
\nThe home side looked to have secured at least a draw with a try in injury time but the referee adjudged the hooker to have blocked a Bann tackler. Thus the final score remained at 17-12 giving the Academy a hard earned but ultimately deserved win.
\nThe Seconds had a much clearer margin of victory on the adjoining pitch, beating their Carrick counterparts by 34-0.
\nTries from Andrew Herron (2), Harry Russell and Gareth Liggett and a total of fourteen points from the boots of Marc Stevenson and Aaron Kennedy gave the Academy a win that was scrappy at times but convincing enough in the end.
\nThe Medallion side beat Carrick 17-0 but the U-14s conceded 30 points without reply. The U-13s racked up the biggest tally of the day, beating their Carrick counterparts 58-0 thanks to ten tries and four conversions. Andrew Neill and Ben Russell had a hat-trick apiece, with the other touchdowns coming from Peter Heaney, Matthew McCarter, Ryan Pepper and Carter Forbes. Matthew Jameson was on target with the four conversions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Banbridge Academy Firsts travelled to Carrickfergus Grammar School on Saturday morning and returned home with a 17-12 victory. In a lack-lustre performance in which the locals were inclined to give possession away too easily, the side, nonetheless, showed admirable determination to claim victory. The Academy took the lead with a well-worked Michael Runciman try. Good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ulster-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6305"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6314,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6305\/revisions\/6314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}