A Grace Davitt inspired Cooke romped to a 68 – 5 win against AIL 2S League Winners Shannon in the AIL1 Promotion Play Off Semi Final at Ashbourne Rugby Club on Sunday afternoon. Cooke now face AIL 2C winners Co Carlow in the Play Off Final next Sunday at a venue to be decided.¹

Davitt, who last week announced her retirement from International Rugby, rolled back the years to inspire Cooke, in this high scoring win, pulling the strings from outhalf and leading the line in defence, with some characteristic big hits in the opening minutes. Cooke raced to a 17 point lead with tries from Eliza Downey, Grace Davitt and scrum half Shannon Davidson before Shannon got on the scoreboard with a breakaway try.

Cooke continued to pile on the scores with hooker Lesley Megarity bagging a brace before the break. Davitt converted three of the first half tries to take the half time score to 31 – 5.

Sorcha Chipperfield and Downey added further tries shortly after the break with Davitt converting both, the second a monster kick from out on the touch line, to push the score to 45 – 5 before I gave into the cold and headed back up north to catch the Leicester v Toulon match!

The Ulster side continued to dominate despite my departure scoring a further 23 points without reply to push the final score to Cooke 68 Shannon 5.

1. Editor’s Note 21 June 2020. The match against Co Carlow was conceded by Carlow and with a reorganization of the league both Cooke and Queen’s University RFC progressed to the AIL 1 for the 2015-16 Season. ↩︎