Ballymena 17 Bruff 8

With warnings about 6 degrees below in the twenty four hours before the game but a forecast which maintained that a big thaw would take place , we travelled in hope that the game would take place but with a sense of trepidation.

The game itself started with Bruff commencing very strongly taking charge of things up front and defending excellently it took all of fourteen minutes before Bruff opened their acocunts with a Brian Cahill Penalty, but despite dominating much of the exchanges during the first half, after a torrid start in the scrums, Turnovers of the ball in the ruck at crucial times and lack of penetration in attack meant that the score remained at 3-0 until the turnaround.

The second half kicked off with Bruff kicking off much as the first half finished but Ballymena were the first to get on the scoreboard with a penalty to level matters and then two line breaks, the first by the Ballymena Number three gave Ballymena a break up the centre to give the offload to Centre Luke Marshall to touch down, and convert the two pointer directly afterwards. A second missed tackle five minutes later gave lock Andrew Kerr the second try and again Marshall added the extras to give them a fourteen point lead.

This served to stiffen the Bruff defence but despite a couple of attempts including two Pushover scrums,  followed by the binning of the Ballymena tighthead for another before turning over the ball, Bruff could only manage a consolation try right at the death, Player-coach Cathal O’Regan, Cahill missing with the bonus point conversion from away on the right across the face of the stiff breeze.

The weekends result didn’t affect the bottom six positions in the league table but there has been some re-arranging of the top four fighting for promotion.