Letterkenny withstood some early Ophir pressure before establishing a strong forward platform. Letterkenny were dominant in the scrum and line out and started to apply pressure with some strong forward drives through Terence Gallagher, Shaun Dunleavy and Gary Canning. The pressure told and Ophir gave away a penalty in their 22. The kick was wide but was fielded badly by an Ophir player and bounced forwards into the onrushing winger Bryan McGinley who scored a gifted try. Next to score was skipper Terence Gallagher after a barnstorming run through the Ophir midfield. The pressure was ramped up another gear with the backline starting to run some great angles between Ryan Mortimer, John Anthony McFadden and Daniel Faulkner. After a number of loops and lovely miss passes John Anthony McFadden sliced through to score under the posts. With the backline fluency improving, several promising line breaks and good handling put Ryan Mortimer into open space; with men in support he cut through the final defence and scored a fine solo effort which he also converted. Bonus point achieved with only 30 minutes gone. Centre Daniel Faulkner was thriving on the steady stream of quality possession and made another superb break to finish the first half in style with the fifth try.
The second half was more of the same Letterkenny dominance with tries from flying winger Bryan McGinley and another from Daniel Faulkner. Ophir did stage a mini fight back resulting in two compensatory tries but it was too little to late.
Final score Letterkenny 1stXV 55 - Ophir RFC 1stXV 12
Letterkenny are starting to perform and play with some shape, fluency and aggression. Next week is home to local rivals Strabane for a crucial league match. This will be a greater test of this young teams progress.