CITY OF DERRY U-19s 0 BANBRIDGE U-19s 21
\nBanbridge maintained their 100% record in the Ulster Under-19 Play-Offs by coming away from City of Derry with a hard-fought win.
\nCoaches Willie Kirkwood and Marc Eadie were delighted to be able to include Richard Graham in their starting line-up, the flanker having made a return from injury two weeks quicker than had been anticipated.
\nAn Aaron Kennedy penalty after just five minutes settled the visitors after the long journey to the Maiden City. But with just ten minutes played Macauley Little suffered an accidental knock to the head which resulted in his retirement from the action. Kennedy moved from pivot to take Little\u2019s place at out-half and winger Keir Patterson took over at the base of the scrum, with the versatile Kyle McConnell coming onto the wing.
\nTwo minutes later Kennedy doubled his team\u2019s tally with another penalty, after a big hit from flanker Adam Copes had forced Derry to infringe. Bann continued to play the game largely in the opposition half and the pressure forced the concession of another penalty opportunity which Kennedy tucked away for a 0-9 lead.
\nJust before half-time a lineout 10 metres out gave Bann the chance to set up a driving maul which ended with lock Alan Thompson touching down for the opening try, giving Bann a 14 point cushion at the break.
\nScoring opportunities were limited in the second half with the home side battling hard but ultimately unsuccessfully to get back into the game. With ten minutes remaining centre Ben Cross sealed the win as he used his blistering pace to cut clear of the defence on a 30 metre run to the line, with Kennedy adding the extras.
\nCopes was a clear winner of the man-of-the-match accolade, thanks to an all-action display which combined strong tackling, good support play and productive work at the breakdown.
\nBann have two games left in this series of play-offs to decide the Ulster champions. Ballymena are visitors to Rifle Park this Saturday with Instonians also travelling two weeks later. The coaches and players know that they can\u2019t afford any slip-ups with Portadown hot on their heels. Little\u2019s injury is likely to rule him out of both games but Bann showed on Saturday that there is a depth to their squad which allows them to deal with such setbacks.
\nTheir fate is in their own hands and with a place as Ulster representatives in the All-Ireland semi-finals beckoning, they\u2019ll be working hard to achieve that goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CITY OF DERRY U-19s 0 BANBRIDGE U-19s 21 Banbridge maintained their 100% record in the Ulster Under-19 Play-Offs by coming away from City of Derry with a hard-fought win. Coaches Willie Kirkwood and Marc Eadie were delighted to be able to include Richard Graham in their starting line-up, the flanker having made a return from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189],"tags":[17209,5774,5775,5816,3959],"class_list":["post-63493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banbridge","tag-banbridge","tag-city","tag-derry","tag-rfc","tag-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63493","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=63493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63495,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63493\/revisions\/63495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}