09/10/21
Ballymena 21 – 38 Banbridge
The 2nd home game of the season saw an understrength Ballymena u16 take on Bandridge.
This was always going to be a tough fixture but was made even tougher with Ballymena down to 12 players, due to injuries of Aaron Armstrong, Josh McClung and Daniel Lowry.
The match started with Banbridge taking an early lead from the off with an unconverted try stunning the Ballymena men but within 10 mins they fought back. With a darting run from Zac Carmichael, Ballymena levelled the score and then took the lead with the conversion. 5 mins later Banbridge pressed again and scored another converted try, Banbridge seemed to be on the up with another converted try bringing the score to 19 -7.
This seemed to spur the undermanned Ballymena team who pressed the Banbridge team and after a few phases of play. James Orr took the Banbridge defence by surprise with a well placed grubber kick which resulted in James scoring another try and successfully converting to bring the score to 19 – 14 at half time.
Ballymena started the 2nd half as they finished the first putting Banbridge under pressure and keeping Banbridge in their own half for large periods and some immense tackling from Captain Stuart Holden, Cruz Mcnally and James Lynn. Then out of the blue James Orr pulled off a brilliant kick and chase where he dodge a few tackles and when onto to score one of the tries of the season so far.James then when on to covert the try putting 12 man Ballymena in the lead 21 – 19.
Banbridge started to put the pressure on in the later stages on the half and with this pressure the 12 man Ballymena teams tiredness started to show and Banbridge put another 4 tries on the board with only 1 converted. Giving Banbridge a 38 – 21 win.
This was a spirited performance from an undermanned Ballymena team where they stepped up to play a strong full strength Banbridge.
Tries: James Orr 2, Zac Carmichael
