City of Armagh continued their winning run in the AIL 1B with a hard fought 14 – 20 win against St Mary’s College at Templeville Road, Dublin, yesterday.

Armagh’s scores came from tries by Andrew Willis, and Neil Faloon with Cormac Fox converting both to add to two penalties.

Armagh pretty much dominated the opening quarter but the visitors had to be concerned that they had only clocked up 3 points, from the boot of Fox,  as the game rattled along into the second quarter.

It got worse for the boys from the Orchard County as St Mary’s received a penalty try on the 27th minute following a trip on Dave Fanagan by Tim McNeice, McNeice getting 10 minutes in the bin for his efforts.

St Mary’s doubled their total minutes later, to lead 14 – 3, after they exploited McNeice’s absence to send Hugo Conway free and clear to run under the posts, Ruairi Shields converting.

However, the visitors saw out the rest of yellow card without further incident, and on McNeice’s return they went back on the attack, this time with more success. A clever line by the industrious Chris Colvin pulled the defence wide for Willis to cut inside and scamper under the uprights, giving Fox a simple conversion to take the score to 14 – 10 in St Mary’s favour at half time.

Mary’s applied the early pressure at the start of the second half but a break and offload by McNeice saw replacement Faloon crash over to put Armagh in front and with Fox adding the extras they lead by three points on the 45th minute.

Despite the game rattling along at a cracking pace their was no further score until Fox landed a penalty 25 minutes later to take the score to 14 – 20 in Armagh’s favour.

St Mary’s rallied for a big effort in the final minutes but Armagh held firm to record the win in this entertaining match.

ST. MARY’S COLLEGE: Dave Fanagan; Hugo Conway, Myles Carey, Mick O’Gara, Craig Kennedy; Ruairi Shields, Cormac Foley; Tom O’Reilly, Richard Halpin, Michael McCormack, Peter Starrett, Liam Corcoran, David Aspil, Cillian Dempsey, Nick McCarthy. Replacements: Sean Healy, Niall McEniff, Jack Dilger, Ryan O’Loughlin, Adam McEvoy.

CITY OF ARMAGH: Tim McNeice; Andrew Willis, Chris Colvin, Evin Crummie, Shea O’Brien; Cormac Fox, Gerard Treanor; Paul Mullen, Andrew Smyth, Philip Fletcher, Josh McKinley, James Hanna, Nigel Simpson, Barry Finn, Rob Whitten. Replacements: Jonny Morton, Eoin O’Hagan, Neil Faloon, Harry Doyle, Stuart Lester.

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