Having watched Ulster go down to London Irish in the Heineken Cup at the Madejski Stadium the previous day, and many hundreds of miles of travelling under their belts, Ards were in a very sombre mood as the game kicked off.

With a swirling cross wind, which was to nobody’s advantage, Irish opened the proceedings and so commenced this pulsating game between these two young teams of gladiators in front of a large and enthusiastic crowd of family, friends and ‘dozens’ of Ards exiles living in London.

Ards Trevor Devlin opened the scoring in the first half for the visitors with a well taken unconverted try on the left wing.  Irish then came back at the Ards lads with all guns blazing only to be halted with heroic defence and aggressive tackling as they tried to breach the Ards lines.  Amazingly the score was still only 5 – 0 to Ards at half time.

Having weathered the Irish storm in the first half, it was time for Ards to up the anti and take the game to their hosts.  This was done with some great attacking play with forwards and backs combining well to force their way up into the Irish 22m before Taylor Ferguson broke through the middle to score a great try converted by Michael Lawton. A penalty by Lawton just inside the Irish half and a further try by Matthew Weir, when he used his immense strength to cross the line, also converted by Lawton, helped ensure there was no coming back for the home side. Indeed the score could have been much higher had David Wickens not been adjudged to have not grounded the ball properly and Clarke Barnes with an alleged forward pass.  That aside, this was a great team performance and so far away from home with everyone playing their part and restoring some pride in the province of Ulster.

Thanks are extended to all the supervising adults and of course Alan ‘The Don’ coach driver, for their gracious assistance in helping to ensure the tour went without a hitch.

Ards Squad. – Michael McMenamin, David Wickens, Andrew Foster, David Weir, Jonathan Garrett, Peter Croan, Curtis Stewart, Clarke Barnes, Peter Dickson, Stephen Sloan, David Tinkler, Matthew Kynes, Kenneth Mussett, Matthew Weir, Michael Lawton, Ross Hughes, Taylor Ferguson, Daniel Leebody, Oren Kisby, Steven Brown, Trevor Devlin, Michael Taylor.