Try-tastic City of Derry head to Ballyclare tomorrow

Ballyclare vs. City of Derry

Saturday, 2:30pm

It has been raining tries at Judges Road this season with a hugely confident City of Derry playing some of the best attacking rugby seen in the green and black for years.

Richard McCarter’s side have been offensively exceptional so far this season, their latest seven-try win over Grosvenor taking them to an unbelievable 17 tries in just three Ulster Rugby Championship One games. If you take in the Junior Cup victory at Banbridge at the end of last month, that number increases to 22 tries in four games, and a total of 144 points.

David Lapsley hit a hat trick at Judges Road last week, but with the centres and backs all firing, it seems impossible to stop the City of Derry attack at the moment.

“We’ve got to be happy with our start,” McCarter agreed. “We were disappointed to lose against Enniskillen, but we got a losing bonus point out of it and it keeps our tally ticking on. We knew we had to win (against Grosvenor). Five points was preferably, so we’re delighted with that.

“The backs are really firing at the minute, and our attack in general as a team is very impressive. We’re scoring a lot of tries. I’m really delighted with that part of our game it’s just a wee bit unfortunate that we let Grosvenor back in in the last 10 minutes. It didn’t threaten the result, but the scoreline just made it look a little bit closer than it was.”

Therein lies the only problem for McCarter; while his team have been sensational at one end of the pitch, they have been too generous at the other end, conceding 96 in four games. They went 12-0 last week before they began to play, and ended a comfortable win by conceding another two late on.   

“The start was disappointing because we had put an emphasis on that,” McCarter reflected. “We had started pretty poorly in the two weeks previous so we wanted to start strongly. But we were the opposite of that we were slow and sluggish and Grosvenor went into a deserved 12-0 lead. They were the better team, they were playing with intensity, but thankfully we got our act together midway through the first half and for the last 20 minutes of the first half and the first 10-15 minutes of the second half, we were outstanding in attack especially.”

One thing McCarter doesn’t want to see again this season is the indiscipline which really cost his team those late tries, Derry basically finishing the last 20 minutes against Grosvenor with 13 men due to three yellow cards at different stages.  

“I thought one or two of them were a bit harsh,” he said. “David Lapsley’s certainly was harsh, I think that was given for offside, but that’s just an accumulative one for team infringements. It’s very difficult against the better teams when you don’t have 15 men on the pitch, and that is something we’re going to have to address. It was juts one of those freak games; we’ve never had three yellow cards in once game before, I think.”

Balance

City of Derry now head to Ballyclare hoping to find the balance between good offence and good defence, while producing a performance that shows the confidence in the squad at the minute. There may even be room for more reverse passes from Lapsley, the highlight of last week’s win over Grosvenor.

“That even got a gasp out of me to be honest,” McCarter laughed. “It’s not something we want to encourage because they don’t always come off. It’s a sign of the confidence that’s there. I’ve said this before in recent weeks, but when you compare this to this time last year there’s such a happier and more content squad. They are playing with smiles on their faces and some of the rugby we’re producing, it’s lovely to watch.

“We’ll cause any team problems with our attack, individually and collectively we have got a lot there to offer, but we can’t be shipping so many points. It was 29 points against Grosvenor, 30 against Ballymoney and 30 last week as well, so we’re conceding a lot of points. Against the top teams, you won’t come back to win the game.”