Action from the Crawford Cup match between Instonians 3XV and Rainey 2XV on Saturday 13 December 2025. Photo: Bob Given. © FRU SPORTS 2025.

Crawford Cup: Instonians 3XV 22 Rainey 2XV 15

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.

Rainey 2XV were the visitors to Shawsbridge to play Instonians 3XV in a Crawford Cup tie. If the morning was cool and sunny then the afternoon was overcast, grey and a steady rain fell, blown sideways at times. It was thoroughly miserable. 

We covered the first half of this game.

Both teams attempted to run the ball but overhead and underfoot conditions conspired against this style of rugby. Rainey took a 3-0 lead following a Ryan Kearns short range penalty goal after 7 minutes.

Playing with the wind Rainey crossed for a try on 13 minutes, when AJ Brown got over on the left to move them out to 8-0.

Thereafter it became a war of attrition in the mud, between the 22s, as both sides grappled to control the ball in the conditions.

Jack Dawson opened the scoring for Instonians

Eventually Instonians got some . . .

FRU Sports is funded by subscriptions. To read the rest of all our articles and view all our images you will need to Register and Login using the links at the top of this page.

Your support directly affects the number of matches we can cover.

Corrections

Drop us a note below if there are any corrections required in this article.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨