Confident City of Derry coach praises 'our boys'

Kiwi coach Bevan Lynch now looks forward with confidence to a match against Cooke on Saturday.

He said he was worried matters would be taken out of the hands of his players by referees or poor playing conditions.

He said: "Against Cooke, we will be confident. They have been struggling a bit recently. They have won one of their last four games. It will still be pretty tough, they are close to the top four and will be hoping to push on and make it into that top four. They are still a pretty good team but we are confident," he said.

"There has been a bit of confusion over the fixture list but we are definitely back to Judges Road on Saturday. We will be looking for that bonus point again. We have to get a bonus point in every game. We would be hopeful of doing that against any team.

"A lot of them just set out to try and stop you getting that bonus point rather than trying to play a bit of rugby themselves and trying to win the game. It makes it frustrating when teams just set out to try and stop you.

"Luckily, the referee allowed us to play some rugby against Dromore, he kept a good handle on things. He knew we were just after tries. We didn't want to just kick penalties all day. In fairness to Dromore, they played some good rugby. They are a good rugby side.

"We would be fairly confident of getting the bonus point against Cooke. A referee or a bad pitch could stop us playing the way the way we want. If we didn't play well and could only score three tries that would be fair enough, but if a ref wasn't able to control the game, or the pitch was too bad to play good rugby on, it would be hard to accept. We don't want it taken out of our hands."

He paid tribute to his players' efforts in securing the correct result in a difficult away game. Lynch was also full of praise for how his team coped with a congested fixture list. He said: "Our boys have done well.

"Five games in fourteen days would be tough for any team and I am really pleased the way they have went about things."

Bevan Lynch identified some key players in the game against Dromore: "The front row dominated all game; Witherow, McAuley and Sam Duffy. My Kiwi boy Karl Gemmil played very well. He had a good day, he showed some skills and his offload in the tackle was very good. Bennett was the player of the game. He was good in the tackle, the offload and very skilful."