Disappointing Toon in narrow defeat to CIYMS

Saturday saw JKC/Causeway Geotech sponsored Ballymoney 1st XV travel to Belmont Park, Belfast to take on CIYMS confident of turning around the results from the previous games.
Ballymoney got off to a bad start when within 3 minutes the home side took the lead. A penalty given away in midfield, was kicked into corner and from the resulting lineout the CI pack caught and drove the ball over. Conversion added, 7-0.
Ballymoney replied within minutes, the forwards keeping ball in tight driving towards the line finally broke down the home defence to score below the posts with Strang converting.
Unfortunately, the Toon couldn’t capitalise on this and with some bad decision making, dropped balls and penalties, gave CI the chance to score 2 further tries giving them the half time lead 21-7.
Stern words from Marty and Andy at half time failed to spur Ballymoney on, within minutes of the restart CI pushed further ahead as another converted try took the score to 28-7.
This finally urged Ballymoney into life and returned with some nice play and scored 3 further tries to take the score to 31-24 into the final minutes and with the game almost over, only a dropped pass at the death stopped Ballymoney having the opportunity to level the game.
After the game, Chris McIlmoyle said “Today was disappointing because in spells of the game we looked very dangerous however, errors and bad decision making, especially in the first half, cost us dearly. This was a very winnable game as, when we did play, we looked very good. CI raced into a decent lead but as they started to tire, they used every opportunity to slow the play down which also was very frustrating. On a positive note, we finished well, and we don’t leave empty handed as we got 2 losing bonus points. Next week we travel to Portadown so we will continue to work hard in training this week. Big thanks to the support who travelled to the game today, it is very much appreciated.”