Victory for Randalstown ladies in first competitive fixture

The ladies’ rugby programme at Randalstown was only initiated by Mark Hermin, Aine Doran and Neal Dumbleton back in August.

It’s a huge credit to the hard work of these three that the ladies were firstly recruited and secondly prepared to take to the field in such a short space of time never mind put in such a promising performance and excel in almost every facet of the game.

The match was played over three 20-minute periods, to allow breaks for coaching.

Despite some pre-match nerves the ladies exploded into action showing no fear in contact despite this being their first meaningful experience of full-blown tackles and rucking.

With the sides looking evenly matched in these early exchanges it was of no surprise that the opening period finished 0-0.

With a mere few minutes of the period on the clock the Randalstown Ladies broke the deadlock and the first ever try was something a little bit special. From a very solid looking scrum Catrhcart fed to McCartney who missed a lovely dummy run from Robinson to hit Mulholland who found space to break through requiring 2 Quins defenders to bring her to ground.

Wonderful clearing work from back row colleagues McIntosh and livewire openside Stephanie Dowds in tandem with lock Liddy, allowed Cathcart to find McGlinchey on the charge whose perfect offload to rampaging number 8 Danielle Connolly allowed her to step no less than 4 oncoming defenders to sprint home touching down for the game’s opening try.

Straight from the restart fullback McIntosh sped off for her own foray into Quins’ territory. From the resulting ruck Picton and McQuillan continued to punch holes in the Quins ruck defence. Quick hands from Cathcart and McCartney fed Kim Robinson whose miss pass to Connolly, popping up in the three-quarter line causing uncertainty in the Quins defence, allowed McGlinchey to capitalise and bounce through 2 oncoming would-be tacklers to dot-down in the corner.

In the third period, Cathcart’s quick pass to the on-rushing McGlinchey effected the breaking of the gain-line and the resulting offload to McCartney with quick hands through McIntosh, Robinson and Mulholland found Connolly again on the charge brushing off would-be tacklers to score her second try of the evening. Connolly converted her own try to take her personal points tally to 12.