The Front Row Union Sport - Community Series: Kerry 24 Ballincollig 5

Community Series: Kerry 24 Ballincollig 5

Oct 6, 2020

—

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.

I made the 11 hour round trip to Abbeyfeale RFC to cover this historic clash between, newly formed, Kerry RFC and, AIL newcomers, Ballincollig RFC in their first round Community Series match in the Munster Conference.

Unfortunately, it was a cold, dank and breezy day in Co Limerick and the match didn’t quite meet the occasion, both teams a bit rusty.

This game was their first proper hit out since March and in difficult enough conditions quite a few moves didn’t reach completion. However it was a well contested game with plenty of endeavour from both teams.

The first half was particularly scrappy. Kerry had the advantage of the stiff breeze blowing up the pitch and they raced to an early lead with Laoise O’Driscoll knocking over an early penalty.

Meabh McElligott heads for the line for Kerry’s first try.

Ballincollig responded and worked their way downfield for a period of pressure in the Kerry half but a break out by Kerry’s Meabh McElligott ended with the youngster going over out wide for the games opening try. The conversion was missed leaving Kerry with a 8 – 0 lead.

The visitors looked to their pack and, once more, they worked their way into Kerry territory. This time they came back with the points, outhalf Christine Brien-O’Sullivan crashing over, after a period of pressure on the Kerry line, to take the score to 8 – 5.

Christine Brien-O’Sullivan scored for Ballincollig.

The remainder of the half was mostly staged between the two 10 meter lines either side of halfway but, with scrum half Muirne Wall constantly probing the defence, Kerry managed to make further inroads for O’Driscoll to send over two penalties to take the score to 14 – 5 at half time.

Given the conditions you would have expected Ballincollig to enjoy the lions share of territory in the second half but the enthusiastic Kerry defence forced a few mistakes and kept Ballincollig pinned in their own territory.

O’Driscoll was the first to reap the reward with the Kerry outhalf crossing for their second try before the sprightly McElligott bagged a brace with a try out wide minutes later. The two scores went unconverted giving Kerry a 24 – 5 lead.

Ballincollig worked hard to get across the line in the closing stages but the Kerry defence held firm to claim their historic win.

Lisa-Marie Murphy

The Front Row Union Player of the game.

Our player of the game goes to former Railway Union player Lisa-Marie Murphy who’s calming presence with the ball in hand gave Kerry cleaner possession to work off.