Dolphin let Ballymena slip through their grasp

Dolphin 24 Ballymena 24

Not to be. The Cork side were dreadfully disappointed to give up two late tries and a share of the points to their northern guests.

Coach Hamish Adams was phlegmatic afterwards, expressing the view that his side would have done well to have beaten Ballymena, but he was nevertheless disappointed not to have taken all the spoils, as they should have done.

“You never jump to conclusions in this game,” he said, “and while it looked like we should have won, Ballymena are always dangerous. With Paddy Wallace obviously having been practicing his kicking out in Australia with the Irish team, it was always likely they’d take something away from here.”

Adams was referring to the Ballymena out-half's injury time conversion kick from the touchline which completed a Lazarus act for the Ulster outfit who had trailed 24-10 after 70 minutes and who, despite being the much bigger side physically, had not shown much fire in their collective belly up to that point.

“I was pleased with the way my guys stood up to the physical challenge and also how they performed in the set pieces.

“We’d worked hard in the last week on those aspects of our game and it paid off for us today,” the Dolphin coach said.

“Ballymena probably expected to come here today and win, but we put it up to them and they are probably relieved to have a point. But we’ve a couple of weeks now to regroup and we know the sort of challenges we’ll have to face during the rest of the season, so we will have learned a lot from today,” he added.

Ballymena are certainly a big side, but their bulk certainly did not throw Dolphin out of their stride in the early exchanges. Their pack, in particular, did very well in the scrums, although in open play early on they tended to become isolated and lose possession.

Ballymena actually opened the scoring with a penalty from South African full-back Dirkie Strydom, but Dolphin were unimpressed and took the ball downfield and looked like scoring at least once before Shane Madigan made the breakthrough in the 15th minute and John O'Mahony converted to put them into a 7-3 lead.

Four minutes later they were nearly in for another when Rory McGrath made a rampaging run, complete with a textbook chip, but Dolphin didn’t make it count immediately.

They did, however, from the resulting scrum, which was all the more remarkable because McGrath was missing with a leg injury incurred during his safari, but the Dolphin pack still managed to smuggle Conor Twomey over the line to give themselves a 14-3 lead with John O’Mahony’s conversion.

Strydom then missed two penalty attempts, but when Paddy Wallace ghosted in for a try and converted it himself, Ballymena were right back in it and at half-time were comfortable with a 14-10 scoreline.

They began to take control of the game in the second period and nearly scored on several occasions, but they couldn't finish the few chances they created and they would rue the fact later.

The first score of the second period game from a neat O’Mahony drop goal after Eddie Knowles did his impression of a runaway truck, but then 30 minutes into the half, Conor Twomey scored again after being set up by Knowles and Dolphin looked like they were going to take all the points.

Just a minute later, however, Ballymena contrived to put Andrew Trimble over in the corner and Wallace converted, but even at that you could not see them rescuing anything.

They must have paid up their RNLI membership, because rescue it they did when Hugh Jones bulldozed his way over in injury time to leave them two points adrift with the conversion attempt to come. Wallace duly slotted the kick and Ballymena took a point.