Ards 4ths 32 v Antrim 14.

On the last Saturday in November, men in their forties can usually be found in the local shopping centres pushing trolleys while keeping an eye on the kids, or snoozing by the fire while watching repeats of 1970’s fatalistic war movies. Not so for some of the alpha males of Ards rugby club,

The epitome of this attitude is that old war horse Stevie Nutt who returned to the Knights for the first time since a serious injury last season, he led the team on Saturday with two tries and a great performance as usual.

The Ards driving maul was the dominant characteristic of the game with some great line out catches from Nigel Lynch and Bryan McFarland providing the platform to rumble its way towards the Antrim line. On one occasion this maul was finished off by hooker Andrew Fletcher, another who has had a fantastic year’s rugby.

Ards skipper Stevie Bell opened the Ards account and is in the middle of a hot scoring streak with seven tries from his last five appearances. Black Knights debutant Neil Beggs constantly asked questions of the Antrim defence with a mixture of powerful running and dancing feet. Beggs was rewarded with a great score which will no doubt be the first of many for this team.

Ards try of the day was a thing of beauty, a sweeping attacking move straight of the training paddock with a surprisingly deft touch from Nigel Lynch who’s well placed chip kick was perfectly weighted into the path of Gordy McBride, McBride showed remarkable anticipation to predict Lynch's intentions, before fly-hacking the ball over the tryline and then turning on the afterburners to outpace the Antrim defence and win the race to touch down.

Graeme Martin, returned to the squad with a good game, converted to complete the Ards scoring. This was a good overall performance from the Ardsmen with the only negative points being injuries to Andy Wright and Gary Dempsey. Andy got treatment for a broken arm and will be out for sometime.

Final Score: Ards 4th 32 v Antrim 14.