Toon’s Towns’ Cup dreams dashed

After 80 minutes of another thrilling game at Kilraughts road, Ballymoney were defeated 20-12.

Ballymoney came into the game with high hopes salvaging something from a disappointing season with a good result against the Ballynahinch side, and for a large part of the game it looked like they were going to. It was as last week’s fixture panned out the last 10 minutes which were to be the hardest to bear for Ballymoney.

Ballymoney started well in the first exchanges and took an early lead through the boot of James Cleland and the score was to remain as such for the majority of the 1st half. It was at the end of the first half after withstanding a lot of pressure that Ballymoney made one mistake which allowed the Ballynahinch 10 to weave his way to the Ballymoney try line to take the score to 7-3 in Ballynahinch’s favour at half time.

Ballymoney were not going to lie down and showed their resilience when in the early exchanges of the second half after some dominant play around the park out-half Cormac McCartney crossed the line for Ballymoney’s only try of the game.

Ballymoney continued to pile on the pressure but were unable to make headways into the Ballynahinch defence.

Ballynahinch were awarded a penalty in the last 10 minutes of the game and took the lead again. Ballymoney did what they could to get back into their opponents half again but Ballynahinch continued their onslaught and were awarded with another try to cement their efforts in place and take the final score to 20-12.