U17s dispose of Armagh in Cup

City U17’s off to a flyer in Cup Competition!

In their first game in 7 weeks and only the second game since the 19th December, the Derry boys got their teeth in to the Armagh U17’s and produced a good performance to emerge 29 points to nil victors.

After a period of settling in it was not long until the Derry outfit found their rhythm and in the 14th minute Jamie Devine scored under the posts. After the ball was thrown to him he caught it and when the defence stepped back he took off through the line out to get the first of his scores. The simple conversion attempt was kicked by outhalf Ross Doherty. With the rust of no game time showing it was not until the 35 minute when after a period of good approach work by the forwards, Andrew Robinson was on hand to take the pass and power over close in. unfortunately the conversion was missed and this took the score to 12 – nil.

Ten minutes later after a clearing kick from the home side was fielded another good individual score came. Full back Conall Doherty caught the ball on his own 10m line and took off on one of his trademark runs straight through the heart of the home team and scored an unconverted try out wide.

Almost from the kick off the home side again decided to send a long kick to try to relieve pressure but unfortunately it fell to speedster Jamie Devine. In an almost carbon copy of the last score he caught the ball and powered his way half the length of the field to score another fine individual try. This again went unconverted and brought the score to 22 – nil to the City boys.

A few handling errors and bad decision making led to the next score taking a while to come, when it did it was a classic! The ball was moved well through the hands and the phases by the backs and forwards and when eventually the ball was thrown wide replacement scrum half David Guckian burst on to the ball at pace to completely outstrip the defence and score a great team try. The try was given it’s full worth by Conall Doherty when he added the conversion. This brought the final score to 29 points to nil in favour of the young Derry team, this was a pleasing result considering the long lay off due to the bad weather.

There are plenty of areas the team can improve on and these will be worked on this week before the next round of Cup qualifiers which will see the Derry boys travel to Ulster Semi finalists Ballymoney next week. This will be a stern test of the team and with the correct attitude this team can do the business. Before that the U17 team have a friendly game on Monday night under the floodlights at Judges Rd against a County Donegal Schools U18 side, all support would be most welcome for the boys!