Maxol-sponsored Carrick 1st XV were beaten by 15 points to 9 away to Section 2
\nwinners Omagh in their last League match of the season on Saturday 11 April.
\nAlthough the destination of the title was already decided, and Carrick confirmed
\nin second place, before Saturday’s encounter, the match was fiercely contested
\nand tempers boiled over a few times before the end. The weather conditions were
\nawful, however, with a bitingly cold breeze and frequent hail showers, so
\ndespite the intensity of the contest the rugby never reached a high standard.
\nCarrick were dominant in the scrum but their line-out malfunctioned for most of
\nthe first half and, partly as a result of this, and some poor decision making,
\nthey were not able to take advantage of the wind at their backs, territorial
\ndominance, a high Omagh penalty count and two (over-lapping) Omagh yellow cards.
\nThe home side got just one try-scoring chance and took it and so led by 7
\npoints to 6 at half-time, Carrick’s points coming from two Luke Whittall
\npenalties.
\nThe second half was dominated by the deteriorating weather
\nconditions and was marked by the high error count for both sides and a lot of
\ninjury stoppages. A Luke Whittall penalty offset one for Omagh to make the score
\n10 points to 9 in the home side’s favour going into the last ten minutes but
\nOmagh grabbed a try when they caught the Carrick defence napping on the blind
\nside of a scrum with five minutes of normal time remaining. This left them
\nleading by 15 points to 9 and, despite more than ten minutes of injury time,
\nCarrick were never able to threaten the Omagh line and this remained the score
\nuntil the final whistle was blown.
\nA disappointing end to the 2014-15 season
\nfor Carrick but they can take heart from the fact that they had their best
\nseason in more than a decade, finishing second in the League and recording some
\nexcellent wins, including those away to Coleraine, Enniskillen and Academy. For
\nthis much credit must go to Warren McLean, Neil Hanna, Captain Johnny Cullen and
\nsenior players Aaron McKinney and Andy Kinkaid.
\nThe Carrick team against Omagh
\nwas:-
\nA. McKinney; R. Crymble, J. Cullen(Capt), J. Sheriff(E. McBrien), P.
\nSimpson; L. Whittall, K. Topping; M. Smylie, N. Hanna, R. Williams, A. Kinkaid,
\nC. Rodgers, R. Marsden, M. Fisher, R. McGonigle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maxol-sponsored Carrick 1st XV were beaten by 15 points to 9 away to Section 2 winners Omagh in their last League match of the season on Saturday 11 April. Although the destination of the title was already decided, and Carrick confirmed in second place, before Saturday’s encounter, the match was fiercely contested and tempers boiled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1060,4],"tags":[5042,9470,17230,4702,7617],"class_list":["post-84929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-carrickfergus","category-clubs","tag-carrickfergus-2","tag-maxol","tag-omagh","tag-report","tag-sponsored"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84929","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=84929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84930,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84929\/revisions\/84930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}