The IRFU Volkswagen Mixed Tag competition kicked off at Belfast Harlequins RFC on Thursday evening with 12 teams competing in the Ulster leg.

The competition was held with Covid-19 precautions in place which involved a strict schedule for the teams’ arrivals, limited access to the playing pitch and rugby balls and other equipment disinfected between matches.

The twelve teams had been split into three groups (see below) and they will be playing within their groups for the first three weeks to decide placings for the second half of the tournament.

Results

The results, by group, are shown below.

	GROUP 1
HashTags	28 – 8	Carlingford Knights
Space Cadets	29 – 14	Derryvolgie Halss
	GROUP 2
Tag Heures	17 – 11	Flatliners
Friesian Taggers	34 – 17	Taggers Bay
	GROUP 3
Tag My Pitch Up	17 – 13	Sheep Taggers
Galacticos	17 – 7	Runaways

Standings

This gives the tables as follows.

GROUP 1	P	W	PD	BP	PTS
HashTags	1	1	20	0	4
Space Cadets	1	1	15	0	4
Derryvolgie Halss	1	0	(15)	0	0
Carlingford Knights	1	0	(20)	0	0

GROUP 2	P	W	PD	BP	PTS
Friesian Taggers	1	1	17	0	4
Tag Heures	1	1	6	0	4
Flat Liners	1	0	(6)	0	0
Taggers Bay	1	0	(17)	0	0

GROUP 3	P	W	PD	BP	PTS
Galacticos	1	1	10	0	4
Tag My Pitch Up	1	1	4	0	4
Sheep Taggers	1	0	(4)	1	1
Runaways	1	0	(10)	0	0

We caught up with Benny Glendinning and Aoife Gordon from Tag Heuers after their opening win against Flat Liners.

For my first visit to an official tag tournament I must admit I did find it hard keeping track of the scores with female players getting three points and male players one but thanks to Claire McAteer at Tag in Ulster we do have the leading scorers which is something we’ll be monitoring throughout the tournament.

Leading Scorers

The leading scorers after Week 1 are shown below.

PLAYER	TEAM	TRIES
Conor Gilloway	Flatliners	4
Joanne Orr	Friesian Taggers	4
Mark Coughlin	Derryvolgie	4
Colin Millar	Hashtags	3
Gerard Kelly	Flatliners	3
Hannah Lewis	Hashtags	3
Hazel Jordan	Tag My Pitch Up	3
Heidi Brede	Space Cadets	3
Julie Dennison	Friesian Taggers	3
Peter Dawson	Hashtags	3
Ryan Trainor	Flatliners	3
Zahra Bonnar	Friesian Taggers	3

Galleries

We have six galleries from the matches below with over five hundred images across the games. Pitch 1 games were covered by Bob Given Photography and Pitch 2 by John McMurtry.