U13’s – Premier League – 12th Nov 2011

On Saturday 12th November 2011 we played our first match away to Killarney Athletic. Despite a few first team players unavailable the game started well for Fenit whom were in full control but failed to capitalise on a number of chances. Sean Mortimer inparticular was having his best game to date & showed great strength in midfield. The score remained 0 – 0 at halftime. The second half both teams were end to end and after about 15 minutes a mistake in midfield led to Killarney Athletic scoring to make it 1 – 0. This was followed 5 minutes later by another. Throughout the game Fenit were becoming increasingly frustrated with the incompetent refereeing. A number of hand balls, fouls & free kicks were ignored by the Referee in favour of the home team. With 10 minutes remaining a corner was awarded to Killarney & Cormac O’Brien was red carded for arguing with the Referee over another poor decision. This was very unlike Cormac who was obviously upset by some decisions. This now galvanised the 10 man Fenit team into challenging more competitively & for the final 10 minutes completely dominated the game with an excellent goal from Eoghan who passed by four Killarney players & their goalie to make the score 2 – 1. The final few minutes Fenit rallied together & another through ball to Eoghan saw him pass the defence with just the goalie to beat. Unfortunately this time he was brought down by the goalie for what appeared a definite penalty. However this Referee was not going to alter the score line at this late stage & decided to book Eoghan for diving. Eoghan is a very competitive & sporting athlete & it’s not in his nature to ever fall to ground in any situation. Many of his previous goals have been one on ones with the goalie. If only we’d had more time playing like this. With the score 2 – 1 the Referee by now was only too pleased to blow the final whistle before giving any injury time. Unlucky lads, you fought bravely against difficult conditions. You did not deserve to lose today, we were all very disappointed with the result. Hopefully we can learn from this game & make sure we capitalise on early chances in the future. Well done to Killarney Athletic players who were very sporting throughout. It’s a shame that this match said more about the Referee than the play & that youths have to witness such appalling refereeing. We accept that match officials make mistakes. All we want is a Referee to be fair & reasonable to both teams throughout the duration of a game. The league needs to rid the game of incompetent Referees & bring in new younger match officials whom in our experience keep up with the game & seem far more impartial. Fenit squad were Ciaran Murray, Christopher Murphy (Captain), Sean Donnellan, Ciaran Carmody, Padraig O’Mahony, Eoghan McElligott, Sean Mortimer, Cormac O’Brien, Jason Mortimer, David Lenihan, Austin Clifford & Brian O’Regan.