Click your browser's Back button at any time to return to the Matches page at the point you left it.

League Match: Donaghadee 10 - 34 Lisburn (29/01/00)

"DONAGHADEE OUT OF TOWNS' CUP

Donaghadee almost got off to a dream start in the Second Round of the Towns' Cup last Saturday when they kicked off against a Lisburn town side, who were fielding a surprise guest, Neil Doak. Before a large crowd there to see them do well the match was started in excellent conditions with a kick to the "wrong" side. In their haste to deal with this the visitors held on to the ball too long and were immediately penalised. Sadly this dream start was not to be with the attempted kick shaving the outside of the left upright.

     Paul Blewitt clears against Lisburn in the Town's Cup

Undeterred, Donaghadee took the game to their Section One opponents. After a spell of good handling between backs and forwards Donaghadee were awarded two penalties in quick succession which took them to Lisburn's line. The defenders could do no better than give away another penalty, this one in a more kickable position. Paul Blewitt duly put the ball over the crossbar to give Donaghadee first blood, 3-0.

They were not to be given much time to savour this, however. Straight from the restart, just as the coaching manuals say, Lisburn went upfield, tempted Donaghadee into an offence and as quickly as that they had equalised. The Donaghadee backs, with Simon Crowe, Ian Martindale, Jeff Allen and Kurt Courtney prominent, now came into the game with some hard running and good tranference of the ball. This was immediately followed by the Lisburn backs having some penetrating runs too. The ominous difference was that Donaghadee's running was being stopped by the eventual pressure of concerted tackling, whereas the Lisburn runners were punching huge holes through the Dee defence until one of them made a mistake or a last-ditch tackle went in.

On one of these Lisburn attacks they broke through close in to the maul with some ease, but, when they looked to have the line at their mercy they were stopped - right at the goal-line. To Donaghadee's relief the referee adjudged that the Lisburn ball-carrier had made a double movement in his efforts to score, and gave a most welcome relieving penalty to the defence, which restored the play back to the half-way line.

From an innocuous possession Lisburn suddenly released their full-back, Ricky Ashfield, coming through at cavalry pace. He beat Blewitt for pace and went round Crowe with some room for what was the score of the game from Lisburn's point of view.

Lisburn were lifted by this and and threw their heavy infantry at Donaghadee, giving them a mauling from fifteen metres out right to their own line. Donaghadee did keep their line intact, but when the whistle went a number of the men in green were visibly the worse for this test of strength.

Lisburn kept the pressure on and Donaghadee must have been well satisfied to keep them out, first dropping former Irish player Davy Tweed just short of the line, and then retrieving possession and clearing the line altogether just as the half ended.

With the score now 8-3 to Lisburn it was still anybody's match. Lisburn started the second period the better and were soon confidently, possibly over-confidently, throwing the ball around in midfield looking for the right man to see an opening and go. They found one, but, unfortunately for them, it was Jeff Allen they found. He did not hang about, even though he must have wondered how come he got the ball. With the flanking support of Matt Duff and Aaron Martin, the Dee captain started his seventy metre run for the Lisburn line and outpaced all his pursuers to go under the posts. The successful kick put the Dee 10-8 in the lead, although no one felt any sense of complacency about it.

The wisdom of this was proved very soon after. Donaghadee lost a scrum against the head, (it must be said, not the first), the Lisburn scrum-half went unopposed round the blind side, dummied his pass to the winger and went in for what looked a very soft score. With the score now fifteen-ten, Donaghadee were still well in the game, but almost immediately it was 22-10. A very simple move, giving a short ball to Ashfield steaming through again inside his centres to go under the Donaghadee posts effectively finished the game as a contest.

Nearer the finish Lisburn mounted another good run at the Donaghadee line. This initially was stopped with a despairing ankle tap, but Lisburn kept possession and went over for a third score. With Donaghadee heads now down Lisburn pushed to the line and their scrum half was able to dive over for another one to end the game 34-10, a score which flattered Lisburn a bit. Unlike last week, Donaghadee did deserve to lose this game, but not by such a large margin.

Donaghadee held their visitors well enough for about half of this game, but their efforts had the result that fatigue set in amongst their hard-working forwards sometime in the second half. The backs did not receive enough good ball to be able to do very much with it, although it must be said that there did not appear to be too many agreed ideas when they did. Once again some of the backs did look good players from time to time, but concerted attack with close support is almost always harder to stop than bits and pieces of individual skill."