Once again our featured match, Galwegians v Cooke was the closest encounter of the weekend with the home side winning by a solitary point in a fourteen try thriller in Galway.
Having driven down from Belfast to Galway in pouring rain it was with surprise and relief that I was greeted by strong sunlight on arrival at Crowley Park. The near perfect conditions certainly affected the teams who served up a feast of rugby with the match full of incident from the first to the last minute.
The lead changed hands ten times in this thriller with fourteen tries scored in total. The telling statistic was Galwegians bagging eight tries to Cooke’s six though Cooke’s Jemma Jackson was prolific from the tee converting five of their tries to Galwegians two. Jackson also contributed a late penalty.
Galwegians opened the scoring and it looked like Cooke would close it when Jackson knocked over the penalty to give Cooke a six point lead with a minute remaining. However up popped Nicole Fowley to race under the posts leaving Claire Rafferty a simple, but crucial, conversion to steal the game. Rafferty’s nerves held, the conversion giving the hosts that all important one point win.
For the second week running Eliza Downey was the star player for Cooke, the fan’s favourite bagging three tries this time round. Teah Maguire and Sorcha Mac Laimhin also crossed for the visitors but the try of the game came from Cooke captain Shirelle Wilson who started and ended a wonderful flowing move from Cooke’s 22, finishing up under the posts.
Week 2 of the Women’s All Ireland League saw home wins for Blackrock and Galwegians with UL Bohemians and Old Belvedere picking up vital away wins.
League Standings
After Week 2 the table looks like this:
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | PD | TB | LB | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Old Belvedere | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 3 | 45 | 2 | 0 | 10 |
| Galwegians | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 85 | 48 | 37 | 2 | 0 | 10 |
| U.L. Bohemian | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 70 | 12 | 58 | 1 | 0 | 9 |
| Cooke | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 57 | 51 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Blackrock | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 24 | -19 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Railway Union | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 19 | 29 | -10 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| St. Mary’s | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 46 | -41 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Highfield | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 79 | -76 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
