Royal School lads suffer last-eight heartbreak

ROYAL School Dungannon’s first XV went into Saturday’s Danske Bank Schools Bowl quarter-final as favourites to progress against their Ballyclare High School counterparts and as one of the sides most likely to win the competition outright.

But their visitors to Armstrong Field had other ideas, and they stuck to their gameplan perfectly on the day to edge out Gareth McClintock’s charges by a narrow margin to progress to the last four of the competition.

Ballyclare starved Dungannon of the ball throughout, and after engineering an early 14-0 lead, they managed the game perfectly from then to the conclusion.

“It was close, but we were 14-0 down after about 15/20 minutes. They starved us of the ball, of possession, and their 10 was a very good kicker and any penalty they had they kicked us down into the corner and we were under constant pressure,” McClintock observed.

“The second half, we had a bit more ball but their 10 still managed to run the show. We managed to claw our way back, but they scored and then we scored with the last play of the game. We didn’t do great in the group stages. In a couple of the earlier games, we moved boys about and shuffled things, but they have developed well since then.

“[On Saturday] we just didn’t have enough ball, but when we did and got past their ten-metre line, we ended up coming away with a score.

“We did actually play good rugby when we had the ball, but it was one of those games that if you didn’t have the ball and field position it’s a very frustrating game to play.

“We gave ourselves too much to do, but credit to Ballyclare, they played simple but effective rugby and they did it very well.”

After falling behind to two early converted tries, Dungannon enjoyed a period of sustained pressure from which John Carroll scored a try to reduce the half-time arrears to nine points.

Both teams came back fighting after their half-time pep talks.

However it was RSD who made the most of their opportunities, and James Gibson scored and converted a try, making the score 12-14.

After pressure from RSD, Ballyclare took their chances well and ran in a converted try.

However, the RSD boys showed resilience and spirit and fought back. After some sustained pressure from the forwards and good tactical work from the backs, Reuben Hampton scored in the corner in the last piece of open play to leave them four points adrift at the final whistle.

“We have a very young team this year,” McClintock acknowledged.

“The majority of our backline is fifth form, Year 12, so it’s good for those boys to have played first XV rugby for a year already and it bodes well for the future.

“We thought, when we went out of the main competition, we might have gone on to win the Bowl, so it’s a very disappointing morning for us, but there are green shoots and we’ll build upon this for next year and we have things to look forward to.”