Dungannon enjoy derby win

DUNGANNON head coach, Jonny Gillespie enjoyed a good week on the sidelines last week when he not only guided his club side to a victory over their near neighbours Rainey to all but seal a place in the Energia All-Ireland League 2B promotion play-offs, but he also led Royal School Armagh to the Schools Cup final against Wallace High School.

A few days after succeeding in his day job after Armagh saw off Rainey, he was back at the side of a rugby pitch trying to engineer a victory over a team from Magherafelt and for the second time in a week he achieved that feat.

On this occasion, it was the Rainey old boys who took the lead with Scott McLean converting Louis Regan’s 19th minute try at Stevenson Park, but that as about as good as it was to get for the visitors in the first half.

Dungannon then hit their groove with Ben McCaughey converting a penalty and James Gamble’s try as the home side led 10-7 at the break.

Unfortunately for Dungannon, Adam Milligan and James McMahon were both yellow carded either side of the break, so Gillespie’s men were forced to play with 13 men for a period and during that spell of numerical disadvantage, Rainey were able to regain the lead as McLean converted a Jim McCartney try.

But once back to a full compliment of players, Dungannon regained control with McCaughey firing over two penalties in quick succession before converting Stephen Todd’s 65th minute try.

With eight minutes remaining, Rainey found themselves down to 14 men when Jack Hardy was sent to the sin bin and that allowed Dungannon to extend their lead to 28-14 as Ryan Abernethy crossed the whitewash for an unconverted try.

But again, Rainey weren’t done and in the final minute Michael Nevin grabbed their third try of the afternoon, which importantly for the visitors, was converted by McLean to grab the, what Gillespie felt, was a deserved losing bonus point.

“It’s probably a fair enough result,” he acknowledged. “There’s elements of the performance we were very happy with and there are elements that we’re not, so there’s plenty to work on. But we’re happy to pick up four points.”