Coaches pleased to share the spoils

Old Belvedere 3 Cork Constitution 3

With the rain lashing down and underfoot conditions more akin to an ice rink, the expansive rugby both these sides are capable of quickly became a futile exercise.

The game was scoreless at the interval despite Con’s Luke Duffy and Belvedere’s Conor Power going close to snatching tries.

Josh Glynn had the Dublin side on the board early in the second-half but this was soon cancelled out by a Johnny Holland penalty.

The hosts missed a number of chances to extend their advantage while Con finished strongly but couldn’t create a clear opportunity.

Old Belvedere coach Paul Cunningham had few complaints given what both teams had to endure. “Both teams are good rugby sides who like to play and spread the ball about. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and adapt and both teams did that. We probably let our opportunity slip at the end of the first half. Our wingers had good chances for a try but in fairness the underfoot conditions did make it a lot more difficult to finish off those moves. Our team is still learning, especially in relation to providing continuous performances. We’ve had three good performances in the league and we are happy to take the draw.

“These are two good rugby sides. If you get half decent conditions we are both capable of producing some very good rugby.”

His Cork Con counterpart, Tom Mulcahy was similarly pleased to share the points.

“The conditions were different to our opening two games which were played on nice sunny days. We came up here and it was horrendous conditions to be playing in. Both sides played well given the conditions and it was always more likely to come down to errors. We were looking to play with the ball too much early on. They probably played a bit cuter with Daniel O’Riordan putting some lovely kicks into the corner which pinned us back each time. We could have stolen it at the end but that would probably have been unfair. I would have been happy with the two points; especially after the couple of penalties they had in the second half to regain the lead.”

OLD BELVEDERE: D O’Riordan (c); C Power, J Kennedy, S Berne, J Glynn; S Crosbie, A Sheehan; P O’Regan, C MacDonnell, D Lavery; D Moore, J Whatiri; J Slattery, K O’Gorman, J Conan.

Replacements: C Mallon for Conan 51, A Wynne for Glynn 59, K O’Neill for MacDonnell 74.

CORK CONSTITUTION: D Lyons (c); Cathal Quinn, L Duffy, N Kennedy, Chris Quinn; J Holland, R Foley; B Cagney, A O’Driscoll, John Ryan; S O’Connor, J McSwiney; G Lawlor James Ryan, W Ryan.

Replacements: C O’Flaherty for W Ryan HT, J Rochford for B Cagney and L Cahill for John Ryan both 51, C Desmond for Cathal Quinn 72.

Referee: P Fitzgibbon (IRFU).