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March 8, 2010

Under 15s defeat Portadown

In near perfect conditions Lurgan U15s defeated their close neighbours and fierce rivals Portadown 22-10 at Pollock Park last Saturday.

Lurgan opened the scoring with only minutes on the clock when Paddy McVeigh broke from a maul and caught the Portadown defence flat footed with a run in from the Portadown 10m line.

Now having wakened up the big Portadown forwards began to exert their influence resulting in Lurgan not getting their hands on the ball for many phases of play. The pressure eventually tolled and the Portadown centre glided over to level the scores.

Both sides had now worked each other out with Portadown favouring a slow forward battle whereas Lurgan were trying to get the ball wide at all times.

Good play by McCormick and Gill set up territory in the Portadown half and scrum half Drew Davis drew cover before floating a pass to his outhalf, McIlwaine, who jinked his way through the cover defence to make it 10-5.

In the second half Lurgan fed in the remainder of the squad seamlessly with a high standard of play maintained. Following a great drive by Paddy McVeigh a ruck formed on the Portadown 22m line. From the ruck McCormick found himself in space and cut inside to score under the posts with Mark McIlwaine converting to bring the score to 17-10.

Just needing one more score to secure victory Lurgan pressed Portadown and the possession resulted in good field position to allow McIlwaine to score in the corner for a real team try.

One pleasing aspect from Saturday’s performance is that all 27 squad players got game time and each player performed well and to their potential. The stand-out performance of the match came from Shane McKeever who may be the answer to Lurgan’s problems at fullback.

With games coming up against Lisburn and Newry it is important that players continue to make themselves available for training and the Saturday games.

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