Slow start leads to Lisburn loss

The visitors were missing no less than nine players from their first XV as Mark Hill, Mark Crowe, Paul Melville, Wayne Hughes, Adam Melville, Chris Knox, Mark Mulholland, Mark Gilkinson and Aaron Gilkinson were unavailable.

Following a Lisburn transgression, Enniskillen kicked a good penalty to take a 3-0 lead. Lisburn then started to play better and broke up-field on the twenty minute mark, but the Enniskillen full-back gather the ball, evaded the Lisburn follow-up and dashed down the field where he himself kicked ahead to the visitors’ line. The visitors’ forwards were unable to kill the ball and Enniskillen again got possession to put their onrushing second row over in the corner.

Lisburn then set about closing the gap and were rewarded ten minutes later when a great maul on the home line took them over for a fine forward score. With just five minutes left to the interval, disaster struck for Lisburn. Their very influential back rower Stuart Evans was sin binned and the offence also warranted a penalty which Enniskillen converted to lead 11-5. Two minutes later Enniskillen again got possession and were able to split the home backline before converting another penalty to go in 19-5 ahead.

After the interval, Lisburn had the use of the hill in their favour but it was 20 minutes before they racked up their next score. David Scott gathered the ball on the home 22 metre line and he ran through a bedraggled defence to score. With twenty minutes remaining, there was every possibility of a comeback but Enniskillen, to their credit, kept Lisburn scoreless for the rest of the game. Next Saturday Lisburn will be at home to Omagh.