Ballymoney 1st XV made the journey to Chambers Park to face Portadown in the second league game of the season. On a roasting hot day, the Toon men were looking to build on the opening day win at Bangor.
Due to work commitments, Joel Heggarty replaced Phillip Beattie at hooker, Curtis Pollock returned to the back row, with Ross Fallows and Paddy Carson starting in the backs.
Ballymoney started strongly and from a catch and drive lineout Davy Brown opened the scoring in the first five minutes, converted by Aaron Gervais. On fifteen minutes Gervais added a penalty taking the score to 10-0.
Portadown hit back on 20 minutes with an unconverted try in the corner but with the visitors pack dominating the set piece, the Toon stretched the lead when a big scrum on the half way was kicked into the corner where Ross Fallows offloaded to Curtis Pollock to score in the corner leaving the score at half time 15-5.
Ballymoney further stretched the lead when prop Stephen McCleery gathered a loose ball in midfield, some great offloads kept the ball alive before it was flashed wide where scrum half Matthew Pollock dived over the whitewash in the corner in what was an excellent team try, converted from the touchline by Aaron Gervais.
With the Toon leading now 22-5 Portadown narrowed the gap when a mistake by Money in their own 22 gave the home side a platform and duly scored a converted try narrowing the score to 22-12.
With ten minutes left try of the game was scored when a hack through by Portadown was gathered by fullback Lewis Hawthorne just inside the ports half and darted his way through the home defence before throwing a dummy to step inside the fullback to secure the all-important 4 try bonus point.
With a few minutes remaining Portadown scored to narrow the score but soon after the referee blew the whistle with the Toon deserved victors with a 29-19 scoreline.
Marty Irwin said afterwards “Delighted with the win and so many positives from the game. I felt the forwards dominated, especially at scrum time and the backs looked dangerous. Our defence was generally very good but the most pleasing thing is the guys who came in were fantastic. It is a long season so we need everyone and the attitude at training is top class.
We have full points from our first two games which is pleasing, can’t ask for much more than that. We look forward to our long awaited first home game of the season when we welcome Grosvenor to Kilraughts Road next Saturday, we take one game at a time so we’ll prepare well this week in training in preparation for it.
Again, thanks to the support how travelled to watch the game today, makes a big difference to the guys as they really do appreciate it.”