I arrived at this one a touch late thanks to a flat tyre somewhere between Ballynahinch and Belvoir, the changeover not helped by a rounded wheel nut which needed a bit of gentle persuasion to get the socket wrench over!
Cooke were leading 5 – 0 at the time of arrival courtesy of an unconverted Matty Elliott try. However it was Carrick who were enjoying territory and possession midway through the first half.
It looked as though the pressure was going to count when the Carrick pack forced their way over the line, out on the left, but a knock-on led to Cooke cheers and the home side cleared the danger and finished off the half on the offensive.
The pressure on the Carrick line led to a yellow card and Jason Lyons took advantage of the missing backrower to power over for Cooke’s second try to give the home side a 10 – 0 lead as the teams changed ends.
Carrick started the second half strongly but Cooke looked dangerous when they piled their resources into attack, the home side consistently making ground with the ball in hand. One such break ended up with Jack Knox bundling over close to the posts for a converted try but Carrick responded through a chip and chase from David Carse who finally got the visitors on the scoreboard with his individual effort to leave Carrick trailing 17 – 5.
Despite losing their hooker for 10 minutes Cooke continued to play on the front foot and the impressive Falemaka Vave pushed them into bonus point territory with a well worked try on the right. However, Carrick responded almost immediately with a penalty try and the home side found themselves temporarily down to 13 players, if only for a couple of minutes, before their hooker returned from his time in the naughty corner.
Carrick probably got too involved with the individual battles as their concentration was never really there in the final quarter and Cooke wrapped up the game with a late try, from George Robb out wide, to take the game 27 – 12.
