{"id":13060,"date":"2026-10-06T12:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T11:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/?p=13060"},"modified":"2026-10-06T12:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T11:07:00","slug":"match-report-sat-oct-3rd-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/06\/match-report-sat-oct-3rd-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Match Report Sat Oct 3rd 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

City of Armagh First xv travelled to MU Barnhall last Saturday and come home with 2 points, 1 for coming within 7 points and 1 for a 4th<\/sup> try bonus. However, supporters and management felt it could have been more. The team\u2019s game management was poor at times and their discipline let them down when they conceded too many penalties and back chatted to the referee on 2 occasions.<\/p>\n

The Armagh team took to the field in bright autumn sunshine with a few changes. Thomas Dougan had his mandatory 3-week break with concussion and came into the back row in place of Josh Cunningham who dropped down to the bench. Lewis Finlay reurned for his first game in over a year at scrumhalf, with Danny Guy going to the bench and Josh Lowey coming in for his first AIL appearance from the bench also.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Armagh started off brightly with a well worked lineout take and maul allowing Finn Fehnert to touch down after 10 minutes. The conversion was missed. Barnhall came back fairly quickly with a converted try of their own, when right winger, Bruton got a fortunate bounce of the ball to score midway out on the left wing. Full back, Neil Byrne, a thorn in Armagh’s side converted this and stroked over a simple penalty when Armagh were penalised for not releasing the ball. One of the Armagh players challenged the referee on this and he promptly marched the award ten metres forward resulting in 10 – 5 to Barnhall.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Centre, Fred Harris, a new recruit to the team scored a fine individual try showing a lot of pace to tie the score after 32 minutes. Barnhall rallied and burst through some weak Armagh tackling to threaten the line. Ethan Graham was then deemed to have tackled the Barnhall player high and went to the sin bin. With a short tap penalty taken 5 metres out, Oisin O’Neill went in for a soft score, converted again by Byrne<\/p>\n

Half time, Barnhall 17 City of Armagh 10.<\/p>\n

The trend continued early in the second half with Armagh continuing to give away penalties, especially at the lineout and Byrne made them pay kicking two more simple penalties. The game was beginning to slip away from Armagh but to their credit they continued to fight back and Fehnert scored a second try converted by Owen O’Kane from mid-way out with 13 minutes remaining. At this stage Barnhall were beginning to fade and used every trick in the book to slow down the game. Their physio was a very busy person in those last 10 minutes with different players seeking a breather and stopping Armagh’s momentum. Not to be deterred, Armagh did in fact get their fourth try for a bonus point in the 77th<\/sup>minute. The sizeable Armagh support thought O’Kane had won it for them, only for his conversion to strike the post and bounce the wrong way. In the frantic last few moments, they tried hard to win but it was not to be. They returned home though with 2 valuable points.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As last week, the game could have gone either way, but the referee was very strict in certain areas and both sides were penalised for holding on in the tackle and not rolling way. He also penalised Armagh a couple of times for blocking in the lineout which puzzled the coaches.<\/p>\n

All the substitutes got a little game time and it was good for young Josh Lowey to get a few minutes near the end for his first AIL cap. The City of Armagh man of the match was awarded to Curtis Pollock, sponsored by Karen and Co Campervans from his hometown of Ballymoney. The team, officials and supporters were all disappointed by this and last week’s performance, but they still have 4 valuable points for their efforts. Next up for City of Armagh is a home fixture against University College Cork, a game that both sides need to win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City of Armagh First xv travelled to MU Barnhall last Saturday and come home with 2 points, 1 for coming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13060","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\/13060","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=13060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13062,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13060\/revisions\/13062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityofarmaghrfc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}