Those who couldn’t travel to Drumahoe last Saturday, but who could make it to Donaldson Park may have missed another fine win by Donaghadee’s Firsts over Londonderry YMCA, but they were entertained by a tightly fought encounter between the seaside club’s Second XV and Coleraine Thirds.

Everyone is fed up hearing about the weather lately. Donaghadee may not be Cumbria or Fermanagh, but John Blewitt and his grounds team have still had their work cut out to present visiting teams with a sound playing field, and for this fixture they did so once again. The day was fine enough as Coleraine kicked off towards Newtownards.

After sounding out each other’s defences, it was Donaghadee who drew first blood. A speculative kick into Coleraine territory looked simple enough to deal with – a simple catch and kick to touch. But it was maybe too simple. Gavin Prue, rampaging after the kick was able to jump high enough to charge the ball down and then, showing great composure, beat the scrambling Coleraine defence to the first touch. The kick was unsuccessful, but Donaghadee were very happy to be 5-0 in front. It was not to be long before Donaghadee went further in front with another try, this one from the tireless Gavin Wallace. The far-out kick went unconverted. Was Donaghadee to rue the four missed points?

After twenty minutes the referee changed the dynamic of the game when he lost patience with a Coleraine forward and advised him to think about his contribution behind the goal posts, while his fourteen team-mates played on for ten minutes without him. All the wisdom about playing a man short was turned on its head shortly afterwards however when Coleraine’s still-strong pack of seven got a super scrum going forward against a struggling Donaghadee eight. With the ball well under control at their No. 8’s feet, the men in blue shoved Donaghadee remorselessly towards their own line. At the right moment they released the ball and when it was passed out to the Coleraine outside-half he was able to score an easy-looking try. The successful conversion narrowed the gap to 10-7 to Donaghadee.

At this stage of the game Dickie Baillie was showing well as directed the game from the Donaghadee No. 10 spot. He found some huge areas of space to put probing and testing kicks into, and when he saw his chance he showed the opposition and the spectators that he possesses some serious gas. This scribe was informed that because of the catalogue of injuries in Donaghadee some of the newer members were being forced to play in positions they have either never played, or maybe have done so only once or twice. The most startling statistic was that from scrum-half to full-back all seven Donaghadee players would regard themselves as wingers! Certainly many of them had chances to show that when opportunity arose they could run.

The pressures on the visitors of still being behind after some good work led to another yellow card, when one of their forwards illegally slapped the ball away from the Donaghadee scrum-half’s hands. The Donaghadee forwards were now driving their opponents mad in the line-outs. It had not taken the Coleraine men long to spot that Donaghadee’s Nos. 4 and 5, Brian McCracken and Andrew Dunn, were the line-out men to watch, and they of course had put their best defensive forwards to mark them tightly. But they made the mistake of ignoring Donaghadee’s No. 6, Daragh O’Byrne. This young man is not an obvious line-out jumper in that he is of medium height and stature. But his second half was a treat for spectators as he was fired high in the air by Marcus Nelson and Richard Gullen where he took soaring catches as clean as a whistle and presented accurate ball to scrum-half Arthur Brown.

If this was convincing the home supporters and players that Donaghadee had the game sewn up, they were in for a surprise, and an awful one at that. A wholesale lapse of concentration by the Donaghadee defenders combined with a couple of fortuitous bounces allowed the ball to go out to Donaghadee’s right – which happened to be a part of the field where there were crucially no defenders  and a choice of three or four Coleraine men to grab the bouncing ball and score. It may not have been pretty, but it took Coleraine to a 12-10 lead with only minutes remaining. One could not help wondering how Donaghadee would respond. It did not take long for this query to be answered.

Right from the restart Donaghadee, all fifteen of them, set off for the Coleraine line. For a couple of minutes no individual stood out, but the pressure on Coleraine was immense. The Dee men forced a scrum, and then a maul about ten (or was it fifty?) metres out from Coleraine’s left corner. All eight red and green-shirted men worked their socks off to gain a few centimetres as well as retaining possession of the football. At the critical moment the experienced Andrew Dunn took the responsibility upon himself. He smuggled the ball from its hidey-hole and simply through drove everything in his way to reach the goal-line and gain Donaghadee the winning points. A measure of Coleraine’s frustration at losing a game they had come from the north coast to win was that an over-zealous protest cost them another yellow card. The penalty at half way effectively ended the game with a final score of 15-12 to Donaghadee. Two good results for the club following the 1st XV's victory away to Londonderry YM.

The Donaghadee team was: Garth McCormick, Gavin Wallace, Anthony Bunting, Andy Lennon, Andy Magowan, Dickie Baillie, Arthur Brown; Marcus Nelson, Paul Hamilton, Richard Gullen, Andrew Dunn (c), Brian McCracken, Daragh O’Byrne, Patrick Quinn and Gavin Prue.