Injuries mount up for off-colour Clogher

AN off-colour performance from Clogher Valley resulted in a somewhat surprising but disappointing 19-21 home defeat to Belfast’s Malone in Energia All-Ireland League 2B on Saturday at The Cran.

Josh Kyle opened the scoring for the home side following an excellent early move before Callum Smyton dotted down and with David Maxwell adding one conversion, while Malone knocked over three penalties, Clogher led 12-9 at the break anticipating a dominant second half with the wind at their backs. Unfortunately for the Valley faithful, it was Malone who were able to take advantage of a somewhat out of sorts Clogher side, who were forced to play for half an hour of the second half with 14 men after collecting three yellow cards in quick succession and after David Stinson’s try, converted by Maxwell made it 19-9 it was all downhill from there.

“We were in a commanding position,” Bothwell observed. “We turned around 12-9 up with the wind [in the second half] but it was a strange wind and really odd. But even in the first half we didn’t really play well but we got our scores.

“We went 19-9 up [early in the second half] but we just kept letting them in through silly penalties and of course then you get on the wrong side of the referee – at one stage we were down to 14 men for 30 minutes, which you can’t do.”

And the result was soured by further injuries being sustained in the back division of an already depleted Valley squad. Having lost inspirational former skipper, Paul Armstrong to a long-term knee injury and his replacement in the centre, Thomas Barnett last week with a kneecap problem, head coach Stephen Bothwell saw his son, scrum-half Matthew, taken out by a late knee to the face, which resulted in hospital treatment in Altnagelvin and Jason Bothwell suffer an ankle injury during a day of frustration on the pitch that has left him without three of his outside centre options.

Clogher are at home this coming Saturday against Galwegians.