The Front Row Union Sport - Interprovincial: Ulster Women suffer record defeat to Leinster.

Interprovincial: Ulster Women suffer record defeat to Leinster.

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.

Ulster Women, seeded 4th, travelled to St Mary’s RFC, Templelogue, Dublin on Saturday afternoon to play Leinster Women, seeded 1st, in the semi final of the Women’s Interprovincial Championship.

Report and pictures Bob Given Photography

Despite a few individual performances in defence, it was an afternoon when Ulster women came off second best in all aspects of the game.

Leinster (19) 59

TRY: Michelle Claffey, Lindsay Peat (2), Clodagh Dunne, Larissa Muldoon, Megan Williams, Molly Scuffil-McCabe, Elise O’Byrne-White, Katie O’Dwyer

CON: Hannah O’Connor 7

Ulster (3) 3

PEN: Jemma Jackson

Ulster lost the services of their international prop Ilse van Staden before kick off and they could not secure set piece ball and in the loose were smashed off the ball by a very dominant back row.

Maeve Liston tries to escape the Leinster defence.

The scene was set very early on when Leinster scored a converted try from Michelle Claffey after only 3 minutes. Ulster survived waves of attacks, before making their way up-field, where scrum half, Jemma Jackson, converted a penalty goal on 24 minutes after good work by Beth Cregan.

However, sloppy defence in securing the kick off allowed Leinster in for a Lindsay Peat converted try a minute later.

Sporadic Ulster attacks were repulsed and Leinster racked up their third try, through Clodagh Dunne, on 32 minutes to leave the score at half time 19 – 3 in Leinster’s favour.

Ulster will prefer to forget the 2nd half.

A relentless Leinster run in nine tries against Ulster

It was one way traffic with Ulster only getting out of their own half, after they kicked off after yet another score. Leinster piled on the pressure scoring 6 tries with Peat crossing for her second alongside Larissa Muldoon, Megan Williams, Molly Scuffil-McCabe, Elise O’Byrne-White and Katie O’Dwyer. Hanna O’Connor converted seven of the nine tries to give a record breaking 59 – 3 win for a rampant Leinster.

LEINSTER: Grace Miller (Old Belvedere), Elise O’Byrne-White (Old Belvedere), Michelle Claffey (Blackrock), Sene Naoupu (Old Belvedere) (C), Megan Williams (Old Belvedere), Larissa Muldoon (Railway Union), Ailsa Hughes (Railway Union); Lindsay Peat (Railway Union), Victoria Dabavonich-O’Mahony (Old Belvedere), Linda Djougang (Old Belvedere), Clodagh Dunne (Old Belvedere), Judy Bobbett (Blackrock), Jeamie Deacon (Blackrock), Juliet Short (Railway Union), Hannah O’Connor (Blackrock). Replacements: Jennie Finlay (Old Belvedere), Christy Haney (Blackrock), Katie O’Dwyer (Railway Union), Aoife McDermott (Railway Union), Daisy Earle (Railway Union), Molly Scuffil-McCabe (Railway Union), Jenny Murphy (Old Belvedere), Aimee Clarke (Railway Union).

ULSTER: Ella Durkan (Malone), Lucinda Kinghan (Ireland Sevens), Maeve Liston (Cooke), Kelly McCormill (Cooke), Emma Jordan (Malone), Vicky Irwin (Cooke), Jemma Jackson (Old Belvedere), Megan Brodie (Exile), Stacey-Lea Kennedy (City of Derry), Ilse van Staden (Cooke), Chloe McIlwaine (Malone), Lauren Maginnes (Malone), Katie Hetherington (Cooke), Neve Jones (Malone), Beth Cregan (Cooke) (C). Replacements: Emma Kearney (Cooke), Aishling O’Connell (Cooke), Shannon Heapes (Cooke), Shannon Buller (Queen’s University), Keelin Brady (MU Barnhall), Kathryn Dane (Old Belvedere), Diane Ramsay (Queen’s University), Holly Brannigan (Malone).