MacGarry’s Late Winner Sees U16s Win

We hosted Castleisland last Saturday in a league match on a beautiful Spring day. Given the dry spell recently the pitch had been cut and rolled, the stage was set for a good game and those who were there were not disappointed. Goalmouth incidents galore, brave defending, 2 good goalkeepers, yellow cards and a penalty – many of the ingredients of a thriller. Both teams struggled to get the ball on the ground for much of the game and both managers admitted afterwards that this will lose points in the future if it isn’t rectified. We felt we were in the ascendancy for most of a game which we never killed off. We had to replace a number of players from our last fixture as Eoghan O’Brien our keeper broke a bone in his forearm, centre back Jack Kelliher injured his shoulder and right back Frosty Ronan has strained ankle ligaments. In came Jack McCarthy in goals, Padraig O’Connor on the right and Jimmy Shanahan as a new centre back. We were taking a chance in defence but with Jamie Hogan on the left and Paul Nolan also in the centre we did very well throughout. The first 20 minutes were quite intense and both teams were keen to nullify their opponents. Both teams had a few half chances but nothing clearcut but for the second quarter of the game we got a grip through David Murphy and David Egan in the middle. Now with a platform, our 2 wide players, Louis Ryle and Thomas Dwyer came into the game offensively and quite created a number of chances. From a corner by Bobby O’Regan, Thomas rose highest at the back post and headed us into the lead. We dominated until the break but failed to increase the lead after some amazing goalmouth scrambles and a fantastic performance by the Castleisland keeper. One particular attack saw us miss 4 chances to score when a goal was odds on. In the second half the game got a bit stretched with our opponents taking advantage of the breeze to get the ball into our box early, us countering quickly and it became a bit frenzied at times. We continued to pepper our opponents goal but couldn’t get a second depite some great efforts by Sean Higgins, Bobby, the 2 Davids and Louis. At the back at times we had to be on our guard and twice Jack came to our rescue but eventually they got in behind us and we conceded a penalty which was converted. It was one way traffic after this and we upped the gears but still couldn’t score. Cian MacGarry and Thomas Lenihan came in and gave us pace and creativity respectively which eventually led to us getting a winner through Cian with a shot on the turn with a few minutes to go. Oisin O Brien, Antoin Stanton and Luke Dalton came on and all made contributions towards the end Oisin and Luke between them nearly scoring and Antoin picked up some loose balls in the midfield and distributed well.