COOKSTOWN CRUSH MALONE IN THE CUP
\nThe Keystone Lintels sponsored Cookstown got their McCambley Cup campaign off to a superb start with a comprehensive away victory over Malone 4ths. Cookstown were expecting a difficult tie against last season\u2019s Butler Shield winners but following a dominant opening half, they easily advanced to the next round of the cup as they look to go one better than last season.
\nLast season\u2019s finalists laid the foundations for victory with a fast start \u2013 establishing an early lead with 3 penalties in the opening 10 minutes. The first try wasn\u2019t long in coming and was the culmination of numerous phases of possession with the carrying abilities of Owen Mallon, Chris Moore and Ciaran Hagan very much to the fore. Stephen McKenna was the man to get the try following a bit of juggling with the ball over the line. They try was converted for a 16-0 lead and that is how the half time score read as Malone managed to see out the half without losing any further ground.
\nHalf Time: Malone 0 \u2013 Cookstown 16
\nThe second half continued on in much the same vein as the first half with out-half Ciaran Currie pinning Malone in their own half where the Cookstown pack dominated their Malone counterparts. Captain Kezzy Nugent showed no ill effects of the previous night by getting the opening try of the half and when the evergreen Chris Moore belied his advancing years with a try from all of one yard out, it effectively ended the game as a contest. Cookstown weren\u2019t finished yet though and further tries followed from Stephen McKenna with his second, Kezzy Nugent completed his hattrick and Ciaran McKenna also got into the act with a great finish from 40 yards out. The full time whistle sounded soon after to put the Malone men out of their misery as Cookstown secured a resounding victory.
\nFinal Score: Malone 0 \u2013 Cookstown 56
\nDirector of Rugby Liam Currie told the waiting reporters after the match, \u2018This was more than a win but a fantastic performance. We concentrated on keeping our discipline at the breakdown forcing Malone to try and create something but the pressure of our line speed was too much and caused problems. The score line perfectly summed up the game in this respect.\u2019 Stephen McKenna was the worthy recipient of this week\u2019s Bobby Boucher award despite the protests from the captain who felt after his hattrick he should have got the award instead.
\nCookstown will look forward to a home fixture in the 2nd round of the cup against Belfast Harlequins in the New Year. For now though Cookstowns focus returns to the league with an away fixture to Ballynahinch on Saturday 20th December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COOKSTOWN CRUSH MALONE IN THE CUP The Keystone Lintels sponsored Cookstown got their McCambley Cup campaign off to a superb start with a comprehensive away victory over Malone 4ths. Cookstown were expecting a difficult tie against last season\u2019s Butler Shield winners but following a dominant opening half, they easily advanced to the next round of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4096],"tags":[14964,17191,5794,5519,7885,5304,5816,4280],"class_list":["post-77741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cookstown","tag-1s","tag-armagh","tag-cookstown-2","tag-cup","tag-mccambley","tag-notes","tag-rfc","tag-v"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77741","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=77741"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77744,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77741\/revisions\/77744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}