The Front Row Union Sport - Junior Cup: Larne overpower Banbridge

Junior Cup: Larne overpower Banbridge

Sep 16, 2019

—

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.

Larne produced a hard fought 21 – 24 win against Banbridge II’s at Rifle Park in the opening round of the Ulster Junior Cup, their powerful scrum being to hot to handle for the hosts.

Banbridge started well and had Larne trapped in their own half for much of the first quarter but the hosts were unable to find their way over the line as Larne battled hard in defence. A 19th minute penalty was scant reward for Banbridge’s dominance and Larne seemed to to take a lot of confidence from restricting their efforts.

Stuart Andrews crosses for Larne’s first try

By contrast, Larne were able to breach the Banbridge defence in their first real foray into their territory with Stuart Andrews finishing off a bruising midfield burst from Matthew Agnew. Ryan Garrett added the extras to give Larne an unlikely 3 – 7 lead after 22 minutes.

However, the powerful Larne scrum began to get on top and Larne turned the screw for the remainder of the half. Like Banbridge before them, Larne probably should have scored more points in this purple patch but both sides were guilty of poor ball control at contact, with several chances spilled, but their big scrum kept them going forward and after a few attempts Stuart Johnston battled to the line for Larne’s second, Garrett converting.

Bann struck back just before the break with their second penalty to take the game to 6 – 14 as the teams changed ends.

The hosts added a third penalty on resumption and minutes later a well worked move down the right resulted in their first try, to level the game at 14 – all.

Banbridge cross at the start of the second half.

The Larne scrum came to their rescue and, with a steady supply of penalties, they were able to work their way up field for Garrett to send Aaron McBride over off the back of that all conquering scrum. Garrett added the conversion and five minutes later he stepped up to send over a penalty to give Larne a 14 – 24 lead with ten minutes remaining.

Bann upped their efforts and the crossed three minutes later for a converted try to give the game a tense final few minutes but that Larne scrum, allied with huge defensive efforts from Jonny Cole, Eddy Hunter Barry McFaul and fullback Andrews, managed to keep Larne’s noses in front at the final whistle.