Firsts win home v Academy

The JKC BMW sponsored Ballymoney 1st XV started their competitive season with a 11-9 win at home to Academy RFC in the league this weekend.
Even with all the recent rain the pitch was in good condition and the weather on Saturday would make for an entertaining game.
With this being the first game for some of the Ballymoney players so could see it was taking some time of the team to gel. Some errors early on and infringements which the referee penalised the home team for allowed Academy to mount 15minutes of pressure in the Ballymoney half.
Excellent work from Brown, Irvine and Blair in the strong however, allowed Ballymoney to clear their lines. Again, a mistake or penalty allowed Academy to attack but they could not break down the resolute Ballymoney defence. A penalty 20m out was missed by the visitors and this allowed Ballymoney to go on attack.
There was a number of penalties to both sides in the middle of the pitch which lead to a stop start game. Ballymoney at this stage were playing rugby in the Academy half and therefore 2 awarded penalties were slotted over by fullback James Cleland to give Ballymoney a 6-0 lead with 5 minutes remaining of the half.
A maul from the line out rumbled to the Academy try line and Ballymoney were awarded a penalty. They opted for the scrum 5 metres out but again a free kick for no hook in the scrum allowed Academy to clear the lines for the end of the half.
The second half saw Ballymoney try and build some phases. Irwin gathered a high ball on the right-hand side of the pitch near half way. The ball was moved along the back line to the far wing, and the forward battered it up on the way back over, before a line break by Irwin released winger Watson who showed excellent pace to finish the move off in the corner. The conversion was missed but Ballymoney now lead 11-0 with 5 minutes play.
The Ballymoney defence was working well although some over eagerness was resulting in penalties. The Academy kicker found his range with a penalty after 10 minutes to bring the score back to 11-3. Another long-range penalty was slotted over with 20 minutes left to bring the score to 11-6.
A broken game happened in the middle of the pitch with neither side really putting any pressure on each other, until an Academy player was shown a yellow card for a scuffle off the ball. This again allowed Ballymoney to put the ball into the Academy half but a turnover at the ruck allowed Academy to force play in the Ballymoney half. Academy slotted over another long penalty with 10minutes to go to close the gap to 11-9 as the nerves built among the Ballymoney supporters.
With only 5min to go Academy were awarded a penalty which was struck well from distance but hit the crossbar and bounced back into the arms of Chris Hughes. The centre beat 4 tacklers to take the ball towards the 10m line and clear danger.
From the resulting line-out Ballymoney pressure in defence caused a knock on in the Academy back line which saw the referee blow his whistle for full-time and confirm the 11-9 and get Ballymoney off to a winning start in Qualifying 2!

Team: M. Blair, P. Irvine, A. Brown, J. Bleakly, M. Allan, D. Ramage, D. McKeeman, J. McFetridage, M. Steele, A. Young, C. Watson, M. Irwin, N. Steele, T. Hunter, J. Cleland, K. McAneaney, C. Hughes.
Maine Gym Man of the Match: Andy Brown
Coaches Comments; After the match Manager Chris McIlmoyle commented, “We had almost everyone in contention for the selection fit. We do have Moxen, Munnis and Garvin Bellingham coming back into the mix after injury and unavailability in the next few weeks but bar them everyone has been training hard and in reasonable sharp. However, it was some of the guys first 80 minutes today and so it is taking some time to get our attacking structure going and caused some small mistakes. The big positive was our defence. We know we must step it up form Qualifying 3 and we did that. A lot of these guys have played in Qualifying 1 and 2 before so know what it takes and it was pleasing that Academy couldn’t break us down. We were lucky that the kick at the end of the game hit the crossbar but you must make your own luck in these games and the fact they didn’t have any line breaks against us was good and a credit to the work the guys have done in training on our defence system. The few times we did put phases together we looked dangerous which gives us something to work on for next week. Big bonus today was how the scrum functioned and it was a bonus to our game. We will travel next week to Lisburn for another tough game and at this stage we are just taking it one game at a time.