Ball will stay in charge for next season

BOYNE have confirmed that head coach Vic Ball is to continue for a second term after steering the first team to a respectable mid-table finish in the 2019/20 Leinster League Division 1B campaign.

The men from Shamrock Lodge, who were relegated the year before, started the season poorly and at one stage looked to be in danger of dropping to the third tier. However, Ball oversaw a vast improvement after the Christmas break and Boyne won four of their last five league games to end the campaign in fourth place, shortly before the country went into lockdown.

Head coach Ball, who doubles up as forwards coach, is a native of Auckland in New Zealand like former player/coach Craig McGrath, and arrived in Drogheda last summer, taking over from Gary Downey.

Having steadied the ship after a difficult few years for the club, Ball will now have the opportunity to try to push on next season along with the same backroom team - assistant coach/ backs coach Kevin McCleery and team manager Mick Hennessy.

Welcoming the news, Boyne director of rugby Paddy McCleery said: ‘We’ve been having Zoom meetings to review last season and the lessons we learned, and discuss plans for the next one, and Vic is very much on board and Kevin is back on board.

‘We want to build on what we did last year when we finished fourth. All these leagues [in Leinster] are very competitive - with eight teams and 14 games a couple of results either way can make a big difference.

‘Some of the positives - a lot of the younger players who came through did really well for us, and we won three games in injury time so the fitness levels and the attitude to keep going were super.

‘We hope to put out an Under-20s team as well next season and let’s hope we can get under way again in a timely fashion and not be still sitting back doing nothing when October/November comes around.’