The Ulster derby in Division 1B at a sunny Deramore lived up to its pre-match billing as a close-fought affair saw Ballymena prevail over Belfast Harlequins.<\/p>\n
Harlequins started off the stronger team and got on the board quickly with a third minute penalty from centre Lane. Another breakdown infringement gave Lane the opportunity to increase the lead to 6 points in as many minutes. Harlequins continued to control the opening quarter of the game and once more were able to put another 3 points on the board after another penalty was awarded to Quins, again Lane made no mistake in keeping the score board ticking over giving his side a 9-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Ballymena responded well from the kick off immediately putting pressure on the receiver which resulted in a penalty against the home side for sealing off. Out Half Tim Small made no mistake with his first effort of the day taking the score to 9-3. Soon after, Ballymena were awarded another penalty. An ambitious penalty goal attempt from Small grazed the post from about 45m out. Ballymena started to take a strangle hold of the game after a cutting break from Tim Small almost put Mike McComish away as Ballymena started to make good use of their increased possession and territory. A key moment in the match just before half time saw Ballymena turn down a kickable penalty, opting for the corner. Despite getting turned over a few phases later, great work\u00a0from David Shanahan put Harlequins under pressure clearing their lines and a great charge down from Clive Ross was pounced on by Stephen Mulholland. Tim Small converted the try to push Ballymena into a 10-9 lead just on the stroke of Half time……….. for the full report :>>\u00a0http:\/\/www.ballymenarugbyclub.com\/2014\/09\/20\/harlequins-14-ballymena-22\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ulster derby in Division 1B at a sunny Deramore lived up to its pre-match billing as a close-fought affair saw Ballymena prevail over Belfast Harlequins. Harlequins started off the stronger team and got on the board quickly with a third minute penalty from centre Lane. Another breakdown infringement gave Lane the opportunity to increase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[5188,17197,937,7718,5733,17312],"class_list":["post-73262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ballymena","tag-1b","tag-ballymena","tag-belfast","tag-deramore","tag-division","tag-harlequins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73262","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=73262"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633041,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73262\/revisions\/633041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}