Donaghadee welcomed Lurgan to Donaldson Park in a Kukri Championship Two game on Saturday with the two sides lying 3rd & 4th in the league respectively and one point separating them. Over the past few years Lurgan have been Donaghadee’s bogey side and the latter had only managed one draw against their opponents in recent years after some very hard-fought tussles. The Dee squad were particularly motivated on this occasion given their disappointing 28-3 defeat at Pollock Park in November in the reverse fixture. For once the Dee welcomed back some players from injury and unavailability including Ally Lockhart, Ally Barnes, Chris Hamilton, Karl Yellop & Ben Beattie all making the starting XV.

Donaghadee exhibited a hunger for work and pressed their opponents from the outset, a combination of attacking options by both forwards & backs yielding little reward. After ten minutes play however left winger Beattie broke through the Lurgan defence and chipped forward for the line only to be tackled off the ball in the act of scoring. The referee immediately awarded a penalty try to the Dee and a yellow card to the Lurgan offender. As is often the case after scoring a lapse in defensive concentration led to a Lurgan penalty on the home ten metre line and the Lurgan full-back comfortably converted the ensuing kick to leave the scores at 7-3 in favour of the home side. The rest of half consisted of both sides testing each other in their opponents halves but none of these forays resulted in a change to the scoreboard. A telling feature however was that Donaghadee were gaining the upper hand in both scrum and maul. Disappointingly however employment of the latter tactic resulted in the home side being penalised by the referee on more than one occasion for driving in front of the ball carrier.

After what one can assume were stern words from the coaching staff Donaghadee started the second period strongly and only a foot in touch denied Lockhart from scoring in the corner after the scrum-half elected to attack the blindside. The Dee were now threatening the Lurgan line however and two minutes later a misplaced defensive clearance was kicked to straight Robbie Ingham on the 22 who stepped inside his opponent before outpacing the covering defence to score an unconverted try in the Clubhouse corner. Only four minutes after this Donagahadee were again resident on their opponent’s 22 and after successive forward drives skipper Mark Cooper kicked over the defence to find Johnny Bell who, in turn, released the elusive Beattie to score another unconverted try in the opposite corner. With the Dee’s forward dominance now in full flow led by the driving efforts of Ray Dobson, Ally Barnes, Paul Hamilton & Jack Cooke a lineout on the 22 was caught and driven to the five metre line before Callum Montomery burst away to score the bonus point try, Cooper adding the extras. Lurgan for their part battled doggedly but on each occasion danger loomed for the Dee the home side turned over their opponents with huge work from the back row of Robbie Grant, Sam Ingham & Chris Hamilton ably supported by the indefatigable Yellop, Lockhart & Cooper in the backline. With sixty five minutes played the Dee returned to the attack and continuous pressure up front allowed openside flanker Grant to join the back line before stepping inside the Lurgan defence to score to the left hand side of the posts, Cooper again converting. By this stage Dylan Robinson and Andrew Wright had replaced Dobson and Bell respectively and both added considerably to the Dee’s efforts. With eight minutes to go Lurgan tried to attack from their own five metre line but were undone when Paul Hamilton stripped the ball from his opponent before feeding centre Chris McGivern who went over for the last try of the day to allow Cooper to complete his hat trick of conversions and leave the final score at 38-3 to Donaghadee.

This was an extremely impressive & satisfying performance from the Dee men which will hold them in good stead for the difficult league run-in over the next couple of months. Excellent performances from all seventeen players means that this week’s Man of the Match is awarded to the team as a whole.

The 1st XV now take a well-deserved break for a number of weeks before they host Ballymoney at Donaldson Park on Saturday 19th February 2022.