Roots & All is a project where we pick a few teams that don’t normally make the spotlight week in week out and feature them regularly throughout an entire campaign.
I would like to start this blog by offering our sincerest condolences as a club to the Spence family after the recent tragedy in Hillsborough costing the lives of Nevin, Noel and Graham. The thoughts of all within the Rugby, Farming and indeed wider communities in Ulster are with them.
As a club it has been a mixed start to the season, The 1st XV (pictured left offering a minute’s silence for the Spence family) started their Ulster Senior League season with 3 victories in a row, only to have the following 2 matches abandoned due to serious injury to our players Michael McAuley and Michael Cochrane. The club would like both mike’s a speedy recovery as they start their rehabilitation, and we hope to see them both again soon.
As a club reliant on young players, we were buoyed by the Ulster U20s winning the interprovincial series and I stand to be corrected but I think this is the first time they have won it, under the revised structure. We had 7 players involved with the team, as well as 3 with Ulster’s U19 side and we look forward to these players integrating back into the senior squad over the next few weeks.
The season is also underway for the 2nd 3rd and 4th teams and it was great to see the 3rd and 4th XV register great wins at the weekend over rivals Ards and Omagh, whilst the 2nds had a tough start to the season away to City Of Derry, but will look to get back on track against Rainey this week. With numbers at men’s training surpassing 70 at times we may see the establishment of a 5th side.
Our Ladies season has also started and this year see them take their place in the Women’s All Ireland League for the first time in the club’s history. They have had two fixtures so far, first a friendly against Ballymoney followed by their all Ireland league debut, at Home against an established Enniskillen side, with victories coming in both games. The Enniskillen match was evidence of the hard work the girls have put into preseason this year as they secured a 43-10 win (see Aoife Walsh on the charge in pic to right). Numbers at women’s training on Monday exceeded 40 so we will be looking to establish a 2nd women’s side if at all possible to get everyone games... a good problem to have.
Finally, huge congratulation are in order to ‘our own’ Iain Henderson who was recently called up to the Irish Training Squad, ‘Hendy’ is a huge talent and has a massive future ahead of him.. We at Queen’s will be following his progress with keen interest and he is always a popular visitor to Upper Malone.
‘Keep the Blue Flag Flying High... until next time.’
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