We had a break from our Leinster grading fixtures so we faced Wicklow in the South East plate Semi-final in Alcast Park on Sunday lunch time. We previously met in the round robin stages of the competition where we came out on top by a narrow margin of 22-14.

Wicklow go off to the better start crossing over for their first of 4 tries on the day after 6 mins.

Wicklows rucking was very strong all game but we settled the nerves and Aaron Bailey got over for our first of 7 tries on the 11 minute mark which Alfie Chapman converted. Wicklow hit back and crossed again on 14 minutes which they converted. Just on the stroke of half time Mikie Farrell (C) dotted down leaving the score at HT 14-12 in favour of Wicklow.

Wicklow had a great start to the second half and got two tries within 5 minutes of the re-start to leave us trailing 28-12 with 20 minutes left to play. Mikie got us back on track 5 minutes later leaving the score 28-19 to Wicklow.

Our boys rolled up the sleeves and with a good mix of forwards carrying hard, securing our rucks and our back line moving it out wide, in a purple patch spanning 8 minutes we hit our opponents with 4 quality team tries. Alfie Chapman (Co-Captain) scored two tries and Mikie Farrell scored two, taking his tally for the day to four. All these tries were really good team tries with good inter play between the back & forwards. At the final whistle we took the spoils on a scoreline of 45-28.

All in all a very resilient performance from our boys who had to dig deep and come from behind 3 times. The hard work the entire panel of 28 players have been putting in the last few weeks is really starting to show.

We now look forward to a South East Plate Final against either Carlow or New Ross. 
Fixture date & time TBC.

We revert back to Leinster grading competition next weekend which sees us make the trip away to Mullingar next Sunday.