Match Report - Larne 1st XV V Donaghadee.

The first home league game of this season lived up to what the coaching team believe this team is capable of. With close to our strongest squad available on the day Larne took to the field following a hard earned but deserved away win to Virginia last week hoping to make this 2 from 2. We started steadily, capitalising on Dee’s errors with solid kicks of the tee from Phil Andrew’s to make it 6 - 0 after just 8 mins. Larne continued to press with wind advantage and Ryan Erkine crossed to make it 11-0 and Phil added the extras to make it 13-0. Further pressure produced another well taken try from Steven dicky with the extras again added through the boot of Phil Andrew’s. A slight lapse in focus allowed Dee in for a try to finish the half at 20-5 to Larne.

Turing around at half time with a 15 point advantage felt frankly like not enough given the wind advantage that Dee had throughout the second half. But larne dug deep. Not only did the opposition not score any points in the second half, we put pressure on them on several occasions with excursions into their 22. Unfortunately a couple of those failed to produce points - mainly due to errors at the final stage. Nonetheless we kept the pressure and engineered another score with Phil Andrews taking honours from a well worked team period of play. Phil added the extras to make it 27-5 with literally around 90 seconds to go. We received the kick off and went for it. Brilliant work from the midfield to set up a 2 on 1 for Ryan Erskine to run it into the corner for a bonus point win.

As Johnny said, probably the best performance in his time as 1st XV coach. Only 4 pens conceded (and after last week that’s a massive improvement). And brilliant performances all round - from all 18 players. Seriously, I’m reluctant to single out names because I think everyone had great games. If we can maintain this- and keeping committing to training is part of that - I genuinely think we can achieve the goals we set at the start of the season. Well done lads. Brilliant performance. See you Tuesday