{"id":65526,"date":"2014-03-31T10:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/?p=65526"},"modified":"2014-03-31T10:00:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T10:00:16","slug":"randalstown-rfc-ii-xv-22-v-ballymena-rfc-iv-xv-12-iii-xv-7-v-ophir-rfc-ii-xv-5-moon-johnston-partnership-unstoppable-reports-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/randalstown-rfc-ii-xv-22-v-ballymena-rfc-iv-xv-12-iii-xv-7-v-ophir-rfc-ii-xv-5-moon-johnston-partnership-unstoppable-reports-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Randalstown RFC II XV 22 v Ballymena RFC IV XV 12 + III XV 7 v Ophir RFC II XV 5 After Moon + Johnston Partnership is unstoppable REPORTS LIVE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Randalstown 2nd XV 22 Ballymena 4th XV 12<\/strong>
\nA young Randalstown 2nds took their revenge on Ballymena 4ths at Neillsbrook on Saturday afternoon.
\nThe first half saw them run in four tries without reply. The scores came in a flurry after about 15 minutes played. First over was young Donnelly out wide. Then some good handling along the backline, marshalled by senior statesman Turner at the ripe old age of 21, allowed Conor Murray to scamper in.
\nCaptain Hyndman had a hand in the lead up to the 3rd score when he cleaned up from a messy lineout but was harshly adjudicated to have been in touch before offloading. Karma saw \u2018Town disrupting the resulting Ballymena lineout and again spreading the ball wide to go deep into visitor territory. The experienced James Millar was able to barge over from close quarters and extend the lead.
\nWith half time approaching \u2018Town remained the livelier team with Emmet Crawford catching the eye as he kicked, chased and made some good yards. A lovely up and under well followed up by Crawford saw him offload to Donnelly. Unfortunately he just hadn\u2019t sufficient inches between him and the touchline, but again \u2018Town scavenged well from the lineout and Hamilton came up with the ball. He passed to Goodrich who had the pace to run in behind the posts leaving Turner with the straightforward conversion.
\nThe second half was a sharp contrast, and a dour affair from a Randalstown point of view. It was a good twenty minutes before the scoreboard was further troubled and this time it was Ballymena who popped up with a converted try.
\nThe visitors continued to put pressure on the home defence and captain Hyndman ended up in the bin for pulling down a maul. Ballymena stayed close to the \u2018Town line however and were able to reset and barge over for their second try.
\nThe game finished in a flurry of Randalstown activity and Crawford came close to adding to the Randalstown tally only to slip with a few yards to go. \u2018Town retained ball well but several efforts ended frustratingly when the final pass just wouldn\u2019t go to hand.
\nThis was a fine effort from a young \u2018Town side and hopefully bodes well for next season.
\nOphir 2nd XV 5 Randalstown 3rd XV 7<\/p>\n

Meanwhile just up the road at Mallusk the 3rd XV also brought home the spoils with a hard fought 7-5 win against Ophir.
\nMinus a few regulars but with able deputies hopes were high for a victory. Ophir had other ideas though and had a lot of early pressure on the town defence. This allied with indiscipline led to an Ophir try as the defence gave in eventually to sustained attack.
\n The town lads began to claw their way back into the game only for a few decisions to go against them. Outhalf Adrian Johnston with his cousin Adam at first centre continually sought breeches in the Ophir defence and were most unlucky on several occasions. <\/p>\n

Simon Moon, a late arrival, was thrown into action for the second half and with the two Johnstons on top form this proved a formidable coalition as the town pressed for an equaliser. Michael ‘Donkey’ Reeves had several great carries before Ash ‘The Tank’ Mc Clenaghan took route one and bulldozed his way through the hapless Ophir defence to plant the ball below the uprights, leaving an easy conversion for captain Johnston. Game on!
\nOphir were not going to go down without a fight however and if it wasn\u2019t for the heroic tackling of ‘man of the match’ fullback Shaun Mc Crory the outcome could have been so different. The ‘town were made to sweat as two late Ophir penalties were missed in the spiralling wind before the ref signalled fulltime.
\nPhil Clyde had another superb game at number eight tackling and running well. David Frew again impressed at scrumhalf and wee prop Gary Paine had several great carries. Again a fab all round team performance played in good spirit on a tricky playing surface. Next week the thirds face a tough away encounter to highflying Malone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Randalstown 2nd XV 22 Ballymena 4th XV 12 A young Randalstown 2nds took their revenge on Ballymena 4ths at Neillsbrook on Saturday afternoon. The first half saw them run in four tries without reply. The scores came in a flurry after about 15 minutes played. First over was young Donnelly out wide. Then some good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677],"tags":[17197,10704,14099,17287,17254,5816],"class_list":["post-65526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-randalstown","tag-ballymena","tag-johnston","tag-moon","tag-ophir","tag-randalstown","tag-rfc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65526","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=65526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65529,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65526\/revisions\/65529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}