They continued to show promise and produced several good moves with fast hands, strong running and stout defending but ultimately they had to give way to a strong, experienced Ballymoney pack. They were undone by a moment of defensive madness and an inability to stop a couple of forty metre breaks through non-existent tackling.
They fell 7-0 behind after only five minutes when, trying to clear a loose ball in the corner, kicked it right across their own posts into the arms of the opposition forwards.
They were illegally stopped, took a quick tap penalty and drove over beneath the posts. Coleraine pulled themselves together and more than matched their opponents for the rest of the half until another Ballymoney push-over try following a line out in the corner left them 14-0 down at half-time.
Coleraine began the second half with a bang and within three minutes had scored when John Lindsay followed up a grubber kick after a penetrating attack by the backs and touched down in the corner to make it 14-5.
Ballymoney found their attempts to impose their physical superiority thwarted by diehard defending from the willing Coleraine defence but a third converted try was conceded when yet another forward drive was illegally stopped and another short penalty was driven over from ten metres. When the final whistle blew Coleraine came off the pitch with heads held high, knowing that they had given one of the best teams in the league an uncomfortable afternoon. The final score Coleraine Fifths 5, Ballymoney Fourths 21.