Video Highlights

UCD 28 Ballynahinch 21

James Kirk reports

UCD stole the points with the last play of the game at Belfield after Ballynahinch failed to capitalise on their domination of possession and territory over the opening sixty minutes of the contest.

Adam Craig’s squad travelled a little light with injuries and unavailability starting to bite. However they had dominated this fixture in recent seasons and opened the scoring through skipper Claytan Milligan while UCD were down a player to the sin bin. The students fought back with a quick brace of tries aided by sloppy defending from the away side before a second Milligan maul score levelled proceedings on the half time whistle. By this stage Conor Rankin had come off with what looked like a nasty hamstring injury, forcing a rejig to the backline with Adam Bennett joining twin brother Daniel in the back three and handing the kicking duties to Paul Kerr.

Ballynahinch then fell behind to a sucker punch when UCD took the lead completely against the run of play, taking an intercept almost the length of the field for a converted try. Milligan had also departed the scene with an ankle injury at this point but Ballynahinch regrouped and continued to dominate play. Veteran replacement Aaron Cairns levelled things up with an opportunist try with fifteen minutes to go but Ballynahinch were unable to exercise their earlier control off the match, failing to finish the students off and were duly punished in the dying seconds when the students put their best passage of possession together, eventually creating a line break which breached the Ballynahinch defence and lead to the winning score from close range a few phases later. The final home game of the season is this Saturday March 28th versus Old Belvedere. All support welcome.