Toon Triumph in Tricky Test at Virginia

TOON TRUIMPH IN TRICKY TEST IN VIRGINIA
On Saturday, the JKC BMW sponsored Ballymoney 1st XV made the long trek south to Co. Cavan to tackle Virginia. With a few unavailable, Adam Pollock returned at 6 and Simon McCrea started at fullback.
Unfortunately the new pitch was unavailable to play on, so the game was played on the much smaller 2nd pitch, in an obvious attempt to thwart the free flowing Money attack.
Ballymoney kicked off in front of a large home crowd and right from the off the home side showed the tactics they would employ for the game ,trying to slow down and disrupt in a bid to stop the Toon from playing fast rugby and with approximately 10 minutes on the clock , the home side were awarded a dubious penalty which their kicker duly slotted over from 30 yards.
Ballymoney soon replied with a penalty of their own,with Andy Young racking his first points of the day after an infringement at a ruck .The next 10 minutes would see the home side reduced to 13 men after 2 yellows in quick succession , the second of which was a certain red after the offender dropped his knee into skipper McFetridge’s back at a ruck.
The referee was at this stage struggling to control the game and seemed to be blowing his whistle at every opportunity, thus failing to let the game flow in any way.
Ballymoney soon took advantage when after some direct running from the Ballymoney pack led to a gap in the defence which Andy Young exploited and darted over to score the first try of the game. Conversion added, Virginia 3, Ballymoney 10.
From the restart , more foul play saw the ref finally reaching for the red card as Neal Mulholland was taken out while in the air .With the home team in disarray , Michael Allan broke the defensive line and galloped all of 50 yards to score a fantastic individual try, again converted by Young , leaving the score at half time 17-3.
The second half carried on to a similar pattern with Ballymoney dominating the scrum and line out and time and again were thwarted from adding to the score by a dogged home defence. On occasions when Virginia were in attack, the away defence stood strong with big tackles going in from McFetridge, Pollock and McAneaney.With five minutes left on the clock, McFetridge was denied after a lung busting break but from the resulting scrum, the skipper picked and sucked in the defence, leaving a gap for the ever maturing Young to score his second try of the game who topped off his fine performance with a conversion from the touchline.
Virginia to their credit didn’t lie down and pushed hard for a consolation try but resolute defending and the desire to protect their line led to the final Virginia attack being held up over the line, much to the disappointment of the home support .From the resulting scrum the ball went dead and the referee got to blow his whistle for the final time!
Coach Jonny Hanna said after the game “We’re delighted to get the win after such a long journey, Virginia have shown they’re a much stronger opponent on their own patch as results have shown this season. We were disappointed they didn’t play on their bigger pitch but we understand their coach’s logic in the decision as they would have really struggled with our pace out wide .We dominated the set plays and had big performances from key players and Kenny McAneaney was MOTM as his tight work and line out throwing has top class today.
With Virginia trying their best to disrupt our play it was important to maintain our discipline today and I felt we managed this well. We take the 4 points and look forward to hosting PSNI on New Year’s Eve, one of the stronger teams in the league, but we are confident in our own ability and will continue to work hard at training over the Christmas period.
Finally I would like to thank the large number of supporters who made the long journey down with the team (and the even longer journey home)The team really do appreciate their support and we hope to have a large crowd out on New Year’s Eve with kick off at 2.30pm”