Emphatic victory sends Strabane top

STRABANE moved clear at the top of the Ulster Championship Three table on Saturday afternoon when they made it three try scoring bonus point wins out of three after emphatically defeating Newry 69-5 at Bradley Way.

Having already eased to wins over Belfast High School Former Pupils and PSNI, Neville Magee’s men are now one point clear of Virginia and six ahead of third placed Civil Service after the first block of fixtures.

Their latest triumph came courtesy of five tries from the in-form South African Ruan de Beer, while Christiaan Grobbler touched down on three occasions, Jake McDevitt twice and Adrian Crumley once. William Finlay knocked over seven conversions.

“I’m pretty happy with the result. The outcome was what we wanted again. Going into that block of three fixtures, we felt they were winnable games, so we’re quite happy to be coming out with the 15 points,” head coach Neville Magee said.

Strabane now have a two week break with no fixtures as they received a bye in the Gordon West Cup and while Magee would prefer to have games over the next two Saturdays, he’s also keen that his players don’t ease off during that period before they host Civil Service on October 11th.

“The guys will focus on the task all right,” he added. “They know they have to work hard and stay committed and make sure that the great start doesn’t just whittle away. Commitment will need to be there for the next two weeks until our next battle but the boys still have a lot to work on as a squad.

“We have six or seven sessions [until the next game] so we’ll be doing a lot of hard work.”

Also during the next few weeks, Magee is looking forward to welcoming several members of his first team squad back into the fold to help provide him with more selection headaches.

“We have some players coming back into the fold so our squad should go from strength-to-strength,” he added. “I have selection headaches already and once we get to the point where everyone is fit and ready there will be a few more.”