Our Under 15 team gave their best performance in a long while last Sat at home to Kingdom Boys A team in the cup. The conditions were very windy but both teams tried to play it on the deck with varying degrees of success. The pattern was that most of the game was played in our half but crucially for us outside our box. Kingdom Boys generally had no great difficulty getting the ball into our half but had great difficulty getting it into our box. The team as a whole defended bravely and with good attitude and this was the winning of the game in the end. For the first 20 minutes we concentrated on staying in the game against the team who are unbeaten and top of our league. We knew we couldn’t just go out all guns blazing leaving gaps all over the place and our midfield of David and Antoin in the middle with help from Ryan in front of them gave us a presence where it matters and Jack and Padraig on the wings worked tirelessly up and down. At the back Eoghan in goals is going from strength to strength and even though he had no real top save to make he was confidence assured and is now starting to dominate his area. In front of him he had David, Jamie, John B and Bobby who played as a unit throughout – nothing spectacular, just quietly efficient, doing the basics of defending. In addition, their intelligent distribution of the ball was a great help to the team as you just could not afford to give this opposition anything for free. Up front Ryan and Cian were on top form and a constant threat. After 20 minutes of play in and around the middle Kingdom Boys forced a series of corners and from one of these Eoghan hit a monster kick out into their half where Cian outstripped their defence and went in to score. The game resumed a bit like before but we had now gained in confidence and the game was more even. Right on half time we got a corner and from it Jack Mac looked like he had scored but the ref deemed not so it was play on. We reclaimed the ball and now it looked like there might have been a handball in the box by a defender but again the ref waved our appeals away.2nd Half – we now faced the elements, we were in for a tough 40 minutes and Kingdom Boys were into their stride immediately putting us under pressure but our lads were coping and indeed we looked as likely to make the next breakthrough on the counter. Again more dubious offside decisions against us looked like they might cost us in the long run but eventually supersub Sean Higgins with his first touch took possession of the ball in a difficult position and put Cian through with his second and Cian doesn’t miss too many when he is clean through so 2 nil to us. Ryan set Cian up similarly with 12 on the clock and again he had his shooting boots on and now 3 nil. We had a period of dominance at this point and maybe could have scored a 4th but it was our opponents who scored next with 5 minutes to go when Eoghan parried and it deflected off one of our defenders into the net. But we were not going to be denied a victory and in our second next attack Gordon Burrowes forced a corner and David Egan scored again after a goalmouth scramble. In fairness to Kingdom Boys they were full of praise for our lads after the match. Well done to our 13 heroes today.