PSNI 41-27 Letterkenny
Letterkenny made the trip to a foggy Portadown to face 2nd place PSNI in the Kukri Championship Division 3 on Saturday afternoon.
PSNI opened the days scoring with a penalty after a Letterkenny infringement at the ruck. After that Letterkenny dominated the half. A well placed kick from Faulkner was followed up by a strong chase led by Peter Scott who forced a penalty just inside the Police 22. Letterkenny kicked the resulting penalty to touch and after the initial line-out drive was deliberately collapsed by the home side, Conall Sheridan fed Dave Brown who crashed over two defenders to score in the corner with Faulkner adding the extras.
More Letterkenny pressure led to opposition knock ons and two scrum penalties were brilliantly dispatched by the impressive Faulkner to leave Letterkenny in a strong 13-3 lead approaching half time. However PSNI did not lie down and scored twice in quick succession, first through their right winger, who went over in the corner after a slick backline move despite a brave attempt by Evin Walsh to halt him in his tracks. Then with the last act of the half the Police centre crashed over after taking a brilliant line that sliced the Letterkenny defense wide open.
Half time 17-13
Letterkenny came out for the second half obviously still reeling from the end to that first half and conceded almost immediately, again it was the lightning quick police right winger who went over right in the corner, benefiting from the foggy conditions as the touch judge missed both feet being in touch as he dotted the ball down one handed. Minutes later PSNI again crossed the whitewash for a well taken try. This seemed to finally awake Letterkenny from their slumber and they came right back at their hosts. The Kenny eight continued to dominate the Police scrum winning penalty after penalty and it was from one of these penalties that Letterkenny scored next when outhalf Faulkner took a quick tap and weaved his way past 3 tacklers to go in under the posts. Unfortunately thoughts of the comeback were short lived as the home side scored straight from the kick off, and then as Letterkenny went in hunt of another try, PSNI turned the ball over and ran 60 metres to score in the corner, again there was a very large suspicion of a foot in touch from the scorer. Letterkenny never gave up however and after a series of maulings at scrum time from the impressive Brown, Canning and Digimas, the referee finally lost patience with the home teams front row and sent their loosehead for 10 minutes in the sinbin, in truth perhaps about fifteen scrums too late. Indeed from the next phase of play another of the home sides players should have seen yellow after a high shot on Letterkennys hooker Canning, again Faulkner tapped quickly and caught the police napping to run in under the posts.
Letterkenny will be dissapointed not to have come away with a better result on the day after a dominant set piece display, however the slick Police back line were the difference in the end. A young Letterkenny team can take heart that they went toe to toe against the league's second place team and caused them all kinds of problems, the Letterkenny pack and front row in particular dominated their opposite numbers, and young Peter Scott making his senior debut can be extremely proud of his efforts but Daniel Faulkner was the stand out player on the day scoring 22 of Letterkenny's points.

Tries: D. Brown, D. Faulkner (2)
Conversions: D. Faulkner (3)
Penalties: D. Faulkner (2)

1. David Brown
2. Gary Canning
3. Christopher Digimas
4. Diarmuid Gallagher
5. Conor Dunleavy
6. Keelan Kriel
7. Stephen Holmes
8. Craig Heron
9. Conall Sheridan
10. Daniel Faulkner
11. Dáire Nolan
12. Michael Foy
13. Peter Scott
14. Evin Walsh
15. Tiarnán O'Dea
16. Martin Molloy
17. Paul Madigan