Clogher Valley kept the push on Instonians as they started a hectic phase of five league games in 14 days with a good 25-6 win over CIYMS.

The Valley are nine points behind with a game in hand with five games remaining including one against Instonians in the last game of which could well be a title decider.

If the Valley could win their game in hand with a bonus point that would narrow the gap to four and put the title firmly in the melting pot.

Joint coach Davy Black admitted their rugby to be played yet.

β€œIt is only a glimmer of an opening for us with five games in 14 days and a mounting injury list meaning much can happen in the remaining games. But we will take it one game at a time. Saturday was a decent display and to gain the bonus point was a good reward. It was a solid team performance, job done and points in the bag. Instonians losing gave us a bit of a spark and from here on in we will just go at it and hopefully get the results.” On Saturday, Clogher set the tone from the first scrum of the day and shoved CI back as number 8 Sharkey, later to be named man of the match, picked up and drove over for a 5-0 lead.

From the restart CI kicked a penalty but their hopes were quickly extinguished when an immediate Valley penalty from Armstrong left Valley 8-3 ahead. After this burst of life the game became very disjointed which was not helped on 14 minutes when uncontested scrums became the norm when CI lost two props to injury. This nullified the Valley power and the dangerous CI backs had much cleaner ball than could have been anticipated.

It made little difference as on 19 minutes a simple front of line out move from McKenna and Cobane saw the latter score in the corner for a Valley 13-3 lead.

Again CI came back again with another penalty for 13-6 but it was to be their last score of the game. This was also the half-time score and there was little for the watching crowd to have enjoyed in a frenetic but poor first half disrupted by injuries and uncontested scrums.

The second half was to be little better but Valley added two further tries to gain the bonus point.

On 55 minutes Sharkey again broke through in open play and found centre Stott on his shoulder. He had two players to beat but with a sidestep and then a sublime hand off he made the gap to score under the posts.

An Armstrong conversion saw Valley comfortably lead 20-6. On 63 minutes Valley increased their lead when a fine grubber kick behind the CI defence from out half and captain Best saw Armstrong race through pick up and drive over the line for the fourth try and bonus point. Armstrong duly converted and Valley led 27-6.

The game then petered out, though in the last 5 minutes CI battered a 14 man Valley line, (a Valley prop having been sinbinned) to try and get a consolation score but the defence held out.

Valley were to play Dromore last night (Wednesday) in the game that was halted due to injury with the Valley well in the lead.