Ballymoney Rugby Club U-15stoo strong for Carrick visitors

On Saturday, the Toon’s U15s welcomed Carrick RFC U15’s who are the team to beat in U15s youth rugby, this was going to be the biggest test of the season.

With one of their best players (Adam coulter Hooker ) missing through an ankle injury Philip Beattie moved in to hooker and play probably his best game of the season so far!

The game was kicked off by Carrick with a strong wind in their face put the ball high for their big pack to chase but what they met was 6”2 Mathew McConaghy and 6” Graham Donnelly coming at them and proceed to blast clean through Carrick’s on rushing pack and pass the ball to the backs to take their turn to run at Carrick and test what is a very well turned out outfit.

After 15 mins of hard fought rugby by both sides the” friendly game” went out the window when from the back of a scrum Mathew McConaghy picked at 8 and crashed it round the corner and pop the ball to Brian O’Neil at scrumhalf he passed to S.Culbertson outhalf who took the ball right into their face and hit fullback Jonny Storey coming between centre James Orr and winger Matty Bell, This was to prove fruitful when Storey and Bell exchanged passes around their winger and fullback for Jonny Storey to score below the posts for the first points of the game Bell slotted the extra 2 points over. 7-0.

Carrick were 7-10 in front by half-time but for the second time young Culbertson found winger Matty Bell who hit a beautiful line to carve clean through the defence and score a classy try in the corner. Con missed from wide out and a very strong wind saw the score 12-10.

The lads from the Toon now started to think they were going to just hold on to their winning streak.

From the restart the determination to win this game and put a marker down for the rest of the season was plain to see, brilliant work from the tireless Ballymoney forwards hitting ruck after ruck as the fitness of their opponents faded and Ballymoney went in for the kill.

After countless hard runs by the pack Carrick finally cracked and that pair of Storey and Culbertson popped up again and linked well to send Storey crashing over between the posts to score the killer try and smash any hope Carrick had of retaining their wining run.

Con added the score which made it 19-10 the Toon.

This young side should be very proud of themselves, every time a question is asked of them they all stand up and show a maturity and hunger for rugby that will stand them well for the future.

Man of the match for his sheer work rate, hard tackles and rampaging runs was Mathew McConaghy.

* Training Tuesday 6pm.