Decisive fixture for City of Derry side

Seapoint V City of Derry RFC

Saturday 8th January 2011

CITY of Derry Rugby Club will travel to South County Dublin on Saturday to play Seapoint in a rearranged All Ireland League fixture which was originally postponed due to inclement weather at the beginning of December.

This game could produce a seminal result in the destination of league honours as it promises to be one of the eagerly anticipated encounters of the season in AIL Division 3. The two teams have played six games wining five and loosing one apiece with Derry one point ahead having accumulated an extra bonus point. The league leaders are Ulster rivals Instonians who are just one point in front of Derry.

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This will be just the third game between these two teams who both won promotion from Junior Rugby last season. Seapoint won the AIL Round Robin Playoff series to gain automatic promotion and with Derry finishing second and had to beat Portadown in a dramatic playoff last April to book their place in the AIL.

It looked like Derry’s chances of promotion were gone for the season when Seapoint came to Judges Road at the end of March and eked out a 17pts to 9pts victory against a jaded local outfit in the first Round Robin Fixture following Derry’s epic winner takes all Ulster Junior League Playoff against Armagh the previous Monday night.

City of Derry went to play Seapoint last season in the All Ireland Junior Cup first round and came away with a 19pts to 14 pts victory that kicked started a run of form that that saw just the one setback to the same team until the end of the season, winning the All Ireland Junior Cup in the process. Derry found themselves 14pts to 5pts down at half time in that cup game following two tries from their impressive hooker Stephen Verso.

Derry survived some early second half pressure and then set about dismantling Seapoints scrum and lineout. The Dubliners never got out of their own half for the remainder of the game and Richard McCarter found Josh Lewis on the wing with an exquisite 40 metres cross field kick for a converted try and when Andrew Semple got in for another 7pts with 20 minutes to go the game was over.

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Seapoint and City of Derry have virtually the same squads as last season with neither team having any influx of new players. The Dubliners only defeat came away to Sundays Well at Musgrave Park in a game they should have won but the occasion and their first time playing at the Provincial Ground got the better of them and they went down narrowly by 36pts to 31pts.

Derry played in Cork a few weeks later and got a 14pts to 9tps result with two very late try’s in a game that Sundays Well should have won. Derry’s only defeat was at an unlucky reversal at Greystones with fourteen men for most of the game.

The game on Saturday points to a very close encounter with probable just one score between the teams at the end. Derry were disappointed with the loss to Seapoint at home last season as they felt on another day they would have won. The word coming out of Dublin is that Seapoint are high on confidence following victories over Wanderers, Barnhall, Nenagh, Rainey and Ards and the expectation is high that another northern scalp is about to be taken.

City of Derry Team V Seapoint From: Davy Witherow, Chris Shields, Sam McAuley, Stephen Duffy, Sam Duffy, Bob McKillop, Tom Patton, David Houston. Stephen Corr, Stephen Simms, Richard Baird, Chris Cooper, Philip Brady, Stephen Ferguson, Andrew Semple, Richard Peoples, Richard McCarter, David Funston, Ryan Campbell, Simon Logue, William McCleery, Stuart Thompson, David Murdock, Peter Henderson.

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