{"id":12539,"date":"2026-03-12T10:38:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T10:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/?p=12539"},"modified":"2026-03-12T10:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T10:38:29","slug":"match-report-7th-march-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/12\/match-report-7th-march-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Match Report 7th March 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

City of Armagh 1st<\/sup> xv put last week\u2019s poor result behind them to get 5 points and score 5 tries against a young and brave Queens University side. The situation in 1B of the AIL is very tight and any one team can beat the others on their day.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Played in wonderful conditions, Queens kicked off with a stiff breeze behind them. The Armagh side showed 7 changes form the earlier match in October as they have picked up a tremendous number of injuries since then. The latest to succumb was prop, Griffin Philipson and his place was taken by veteran Phil Fletcher while Sam Karlsen was on the bench. Sam himself has been bedevilled with injuries, and this was his first appearance in the side for a couple of years. Connor Neary was promoted into the second row and had an impressive performance. Josh Cunningham came back on to the right wing in place of Ross Taylor.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 The first 10 minutes was a very stop start game with both teams feeling each other out. On 15 minutes Armagh took the lead when Owen O\u2019Kane put a lovely dink over the Queens defence for Josh Cunningham to show his footballing skills to open the scoring. Two minutes later, Noah Bell who was making a real nuisance of himself, created an opening for Connor Neary and the big second row scored with aplomb. Owen O\u2019Kane converted. Both defences were on top then and there was no further scoring.<\/p>\n

Half time Queens 0 City of Armagh 12.<\/p>\n

The second half commenced with Queens challenging Armagh\u2019s defence. Two minutes into the second half, Rocky Olsen scored a marvellous individual try, gathering first phase ball and jinking over the Queens\u2019 line. One would have expected Armagh to have kicked on for more scores but Queens raised their game somewhat and pressed for their opening score. They fought back well and their impressive hooker, Henry Walker was on the end of a rolling maul to score. Mind you his throwing in the first half gave his opposite number Jonny Morton a real advantage at the tail of the lineout with three overthrows. Fifteen minutes from the end, Armagh secured the bonus point when the impressive Josh McKinley showed tremendous pace and handling skills to dive over for the fourth try. Josh seems to enjoy lingering on the wing with the threequarters. O\u2019Kane converted with a fine kick. To be fair Queens never gave up and scored a late try through their Ulster academy centre, Johnny Scott.<\/p>\n

Armagh were not yet finished and the icing on the cake was a well worked try by Finn Fenhert, who ran a great support line when Shea O\u2019Brien made ground from an excellent crosskick from O\u2019Kane. Owen converted to leave the final score 31-12.<\/p>\n

Unlike last week, the team performed to a higher level playing some enterprising rugby, combining it with a resolute defence. The scrums and lineouts worked well and there was more zip in the back play. Man of the match was Noah Bell for his all-round performance. Everyone performed better this week and stuck to their game plan. All three coaches were complimentary with Chris Parker emphasising that a similar effort is needed in the next three games. So tight is this league that a couple of wins could mean a promotion play off while a couple of defeats could see them in the relegation play offs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City of Armagh 1st xv put last week\u2019s poor result behind them to get 5 points and score 5 tries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12540,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12541,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12539\/revisions\/12541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}