UNDERSTRENGTH TOON LOSE AT LIMS

On Saturday, The JKC BMW sponsored Ballymoney 1st XV made the short trip to Limavady where they played their near neighbours in a league fixture. Following the inclement weather of the past week, it was doubtful the game would go ahead , however an early morning pitch inspection by the Lim’s ground staff deemed the pitch to be playable and the match would go ahead. The pitch was in surprisingly good condition despite the snow and heavy rain of the last few days.
Ballymoney had been decimated with injuries and unavailabilitys with no fewer than 7 from the previous week not able to play, therefore giving back rowers Lewis Wray & Garvin Bellingham their first league start of the season with the evergreen Jason Taggart taking a place on the bench after a late cry off on Saturday morning, joining Johnny McAleese, also making his 1st XV debut.
Rory Strang returned at 10, replacing the injured Martin Irwin with Aaron Brown returning to the side on the wing.
Ballymoney were first on the score sheet with a penalty from Cleland after 7 mins after Limavady were penalised for going off their feet at a ruck.
Limavady pressed deep into Ballymoney 22 but the defence held out strong however Garvin Bellingham injured his shoulder in the tackle meaning he could play no further part in the game, with Taggart coming off the bench earlier than expected .Matthew Blair too had to be replaced early on too, having not recovered from the flu but playing due to all the changes needed.
A 5 minute blitz by Limavady saw them score 3 tries and 1 conversion, giving them a 17-3 lead but Ballymoney fought back hard to contain the hosts and were unlucky on a number of occasions not to add to the score and went in at the break still confident they could turn around the 14 point deficit.
With the second half underway ,an early Limavady try in the corner and a further penalty stretched the lead further to 25-3 made a bad situation worse but Ballymoney started to work their way back into the game and tries from Lewis Wray and Aaron Brown and a Cleland conversion with 15 minutes remaining ,taking the score to 25-15 , it looked like the Toon could push hard to get something from the game as the Limavady side were trying their best to slow the play down and sit on their lead .As Ballymoney pushed hard to increase their score , Limavady broke and put the final nail in the coffin ,scoring below the posts ,and with the conversion left the final score 32-15.
After the game, Jonny Hanna was extremely disappointed to lose valuable league points.
“It was an extremely difficult week with so many injuries and players unavailable, we had to dig deep into our squad and it was far from ideal having so many changes, however fair play to Limavady who deserved to win .Hopefully we have most of our guys next week when we play PSNI at Kilraughts Road in a game we need to win. With two away defeats in our last games we need to stand up and really put the work in at training to get back to winning ways as there is so much still to play for in the league.