The Front Row Union Sport - B&I CUP: Ulster A 16 Cardiff Blues PS 10

B&I CUP: Ulster A 16 Cardiff Blues PS 10

Dec 12, 2016

—

We are currently carrying out a necessary behind-the-scenes upgrade to how images are stored and delivered on The Front Row Union Sports. With over 770,000 images on the site, we are moving our entire image library to a dedicated cloud storage service. This means images will load faster for you, regardless of where you are in the world, and the site will be more reliable overall.

As we are working on three separate versions of images during the offload process, the site cache sometimes struggles to keep up with which version to display and occasionally post grid images or complete galleries may fail to appear. This is a temporary side effect of the migration process — the image exists and is safe, it is simply in the process of being moved to its new home and identified as being there. A refresh of the page will usually bring them back, however, if it does not please contact john@thefrontrowunion.com stating clearly the post address and we will restore it as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and appreciate your patience.

We expect the bulk of the image migration to be completed by the end of June 2026, with a fully upgraded version of the site ready to launch in August 2026. Once that work is done, the site will be noticeably faster, images will load more reliably, and you will not see any further disruption of this kind. Thank you for your continued support of The Front Row Union Sports.

The boot of Johnny McPhillps was the difference between the teams when Ulster A entertained Cardiff Blues Premiership Select at Ballymena RFC on Friday evening.

The result, coupled with a defeat by the group pacesetters London Scottish, sees Ulster A at the top of Pool 1, but with three fixtures still to play in this tight group there are likely to be plenty of twists and turns to come.

Ulster A (9) 16

TRY: Jack Owens

CON: Johnny McPhillips

PEN: Johnny McPhillips

Cardiff Blues PS (7) 10

TRY: Kyle Evans

CON: Gareth Thompson

PEN: Gareth Thompson.

Ulster opened the scoring at Eaton Park through a McPhillips penalty but the Blues hit back when winger Kyle Evans stepped inside the slow Ulster defence to score under the posts for a converted try to give the visitors a 3 – 7 lead.

Ulster upped the pressure to record two further penalties from McPhillips and the penalty count told with Blues scrum half Pete Cowley received his marching orders with his second yellow card becoming red just before the break.

Despite being a man up Ulster struggled to take advantage, and the Blues took the lead with a Thompson penalty after the restart pushing the score to 9 – 10.

The breakthrough finally came on the hour mark when a clever pass from Rob Lyttle sent Jack Owens through to beat the rover defence and score out wide. McPhillips added the extras and Ulster held on to record their second win in the competition.

Final Score: Ulster A 16 Cardiff Blues PS 10.

Ulster A: Jonny McPhillips, Rob Lyttle, Rory Butler, Mark Best, Jack Owens, Brett Herron, Dave Shanahan, Callum Black, John Andrew, Jonny Simpson, Connor Smyth, Stephen Mulholland, Nick Timoney, Conor Joyce, Lorcan Dow. Replacements: Jonny Murphy, Tom O’Hagan, John McCusker, Zack McCall, Jonny Stewart, David Busby, Callum Patterson.