Dungannon are on the up

DUNGANNON achieved their goal of earning promotion to Energia All-Ireland League 2A on Saturday when they claimed a 23-28 victory at Navan in the relegation-promotion play-off.

Throughout what proved to be a close encounter, Dungannon took advantage of Navan’s ill-discipline when they arose, scoring key points when their hosts were down in numbers.

The Stevenson Park men opened the scoring through Ben McCaughey’s second-minute penalty and after Anthony Martinez was yellow carded 10 minutes later, Ryan Abernethy dotted down and McCaughey converted.

But back came Navan before the break and they led at the interval thanks to trys from Martinez and Conor Hand and a penalty from Tom Gavigan, who missed both conversions.

At the start of the second half, Sean McEntagart was sent to the sin bin and McCaughey knocked over the resultant penalty, but Navan struck next when Shane Walshe dotted down and Gavigan converted.

However, they were soon down to 13 men when Jordan Finlay was yellow-carded and Dungannon took full advantage with McCaughey scoring a try, which he converted before adding another penalty to his tally as the visitors took a three point lead.

Charlie Conroy then extended the Dungannon lead to eight points 12 minutes from time with an unconverted try and a Tom Gavigan penalty led to a nervy conclusion, which became even more tense when Cameron Stewart was sent to the bin with a minute to go.

But Dungannon held out and earned their place back in 2A, much to the delight of head coach, Jonny Gillespie, who was pleased to have given their supporters something to cheer about.

“This will be something I’ll probably enjoy with my grandchildren in about 40 years, it’s not something that I spend a whole pile of time thinking on,” he said.

“You stand back, let the players enjoy it and you see what it means to all the people who support us every week, it’s for them. I try to just chart a course and if we win, great; if we lose, okay, we move on.

“I try to detach a bit emotionally from it as someone has to try to steer the ship and I try to do that wee job.

“But I’m pleased. I’m delighted for the players and the alikadoos who have backed us and supported us because it’s their day.”

Overall, Gillespie felt his side deserved victory in the play-off, but he admits, work preparing for 2A will begin almost immediately.

“I thought we deserved it today [Saturday]. We played some really nice rugby and probably should have been a couple of scores ahead to put them under pressure,” he observed.

“I thought our defence was superb whenever they had a purple patch and kept them out and ultimately we had enough quality when needed to get the job done.

“We put ourselves under pressure due to nerves, anxiety, big crowd, all that, we made some mistakes, but I was really pleased with how we handled it and I thought Peter Nelson controlled the game really well, kicked well; Charlie Conroy looked lively and I couldn’t be more proud of the players.

“But we’ll have to look at recruitment because it’s a serious league -not that 2B isn’t – but there are a couple more opposition who have had Division One status, so we don’t want to be ninth or 10th, we want to consolidate and go from there.

“We’ll enjoy today and we’ll start recruitment on Monday.”

Dungannon still have one game to play this season with the Senior Cup final at Kingspan Stadium against Ballynahinch to come this Saturday, but Gillespie admits he will probably shuffle his pack for that clash.

“We will turn up with whatever we have and play a game of touch!” he laughed.

“No disrespect to Ballynahinch, but the Senior Cup is not on the agenda today. We’ll go out and just let the boys play, let them enjoy it.

“We’ll probably rotate and give some boys who had to be patient over the last few weeks because we didn’t get through a whole pile of subs, so we’ll maybe just reward those guys with a start.

“But listen, this whole season has been geared towards today and next week is a bonus.”