AIL Match Report
AIL 2B vs Corinthians
The biggest crowd seen at any of our AIL matches this season descended on Corinthian Park on Saturday afternoon.
It was great to see a large number of Rock supporters making the journey west to witness, what turned out to be a cracker of a game.
2’
The home side started fast and within two minutes scored a Try out wide after some swift passing along the back line.
5 : 0
For the next ten minutes, Rock fought hard to get a footing in the game and were gaining some territory, when the Corinthians scrum half intercepted a pass at the half way line, and went over to score.
10 : 0
18’
The visiting supporters were, once again, silenced when Corinthians scored a converted Try.
17 : 0
22’
Rock dug deep and with some hard running by our forwards, Ciaran Cassidy crashed over, to give us our first points of the afternoon.
17 : 5
33’
Right in front of the posts, Rock scrum half, Mark Edwards, played a delightful reverse flick pass to Colm Gallagher and he scored under the posts.
Kicker Quirke added the extras.
17 : 12
35’
Corinthians hit straight back with a converted Try of their own and so it remained until the break.
HT
24 : 12
51’
Rock regrouped at the interval and started the second half on the front foot.
A superb, jinking run from Josh Dixon resulted in a Try bedside the posts, converted by Quirky.
24 : 19
65’
With 15 minutes to go, Coach Blaney made some changes and brought on Steve McLoughlin and James Burke.
Burke made good yards up the right side and broke two tackles, before foul play from the Corinthians full back, saw him receive a straight red.
We kicked to the corner and won the line out, pushed over their line, but were held up.
From the drop out, we attacked again, however this time a knock on gave Corinthians a scrum.
We won the ball back from that scrum and quick thinking from Mark Edwards, saw him ‘pick & go’ to level the match.
From our vantage point on the sideline, it looked like the resultant conversion attempt was good, but the linesmen saw different.
24 : 24
78’
A line out at the half way line to Corinthians, led to them attacking up the left flank.
Their replacement scrum half, on the pitch less than a minute, displayed some great skill and went over the line.
Conversion was good.
FT
31 : 24
Saturdays result sees us head north to take on Belfast Harlequins in the playoff semi final on Saturday, April 23rd.
This will be the biggest game of our season thus far.
Hopefully another large number of visiting supporters make the trip and get behind our boys.
Big Thanks to Fergus McGrath for the report and whatsapp updates