No respite for Ards

Connemara 15 : 3 Ards

Roy Lawton reports

After a 500 mile round trip, Ards returned to Hamilton Park with a paltry three penalty points to show for their endeavours. In a game that was billed as a must win for the Ardsmen, there was great expectation from the travelling Hamilton Park faithful encamped on the Connemara touchline.

From the start, Ards, playing in red, savagely attacked everything in a black jersey, forcing the home side to produce a scramble defence to keep the visitors at bay. Stewart Paul, Scott Young, Kenny McCombe and Adam McKee, making his AIL debut for Ards at open side flanker, were quickly into their stride, putting in big hits or darting runs to make good yardage.

Michael Lawton landed a long range effort into the breeze with an excellent strike to help claw back some of the deficit before the break, but this was to be their only points of the game..

In the second half, Ards were now apparently just there to make up the numbers as indecision and wrong options began to aggravate a deteriorating and dire situation.

Connemara was not a particularly good side, but they were better than Ards on the day. And to be fair Ards have yet to field their strongest side this season such is the extent of the rising injury list. But perhaps its also time for Ards to offload those passengers in their rose tinted comfort zones and give others who have more of a hunger, a chance.

Coach Cois Beukes and his management team have invested at lot of time and effort in the preparation of this squad and its high time they started to deliver the goods with consistently better performances.