Gannon earn losing bonus point

DUNGANNON battled back to earn a losing bonus point against Energia All-Ireland League 2B leaders Wanderers on Saturday.

The Stevenson Park outfit who were led by coaches Jonny Graham and Jonny Patton on they day as head coach Jonny Gillespie was unavailable, found themselves 17-0 and 24-5 down before fighting back to 24-19 at the end, earning what could be a vital bonus point in the process. While the result wouldn’t have been what they would have wanted prior to kick off, the team and their coaches will be content with the final result which saw them travel back from Dublin with a point, knowing they still have to host Wanderers later in the season.

The home side got off to a bright start with Jamie Murphy scoring a fifth minute try, converted by James Moriaty before Moriaty knocked over a penalty and another conversion of Jamie Kavanagh’s 25th minute touchdown as Wanderers charged into a 17-0 lead before the half hour mark.

Sam Montgomery’s unconverted try on the stroke of half-time reduced the arrears slightly and Dungannon will have been disappointed not to be able to take advantage of Mick McGrath’s sin-binning around the hour mark, which came either side of a missed Moriaty penalty and a converted Geoff Mullan try that extended Wanderers lead to 24-5 with just nine minutes to play.

At that stage, the visitors found their attacking feet and with two minutes to go Daniel Mikolajczyk dotted down for Ben McCaughey to add the extras and in injury time, after Cathal McGearailt had been yellow carded, Adam Edgar scored Dungannon’s third try of the game, which was converted by McCaughey to earn a coveted bonus point.

The result leaves Dungannon just five points off top spot in the table ahead of a home clash with Galwegians, who have lost all six of their games so far this season, this coming Saturday.