Our U17 team were out against Castlemaine last Saturday in Fenit in the only dry day in the last month. Great credit to the lads behind the scenes who had the pitch ready for a game despite how wet it has been. We won eventually scoring the winner with 8 minutes to go from an Eoghan O’Brien penalty. We had the lion’s share of possession and territory for almost all the game but we gave up too many chances and the final result might on another day been different. Our defending at times was not as it should have been in the first 20 minutes and we conceded when we should easily have cleared. We were fortunate on another occasion when our offside line got a bit disjointed but their forward failed to put the ball on target after finding himself in a 1 on 1 situation with Eoghan in goals. On the other side of things David Murphy, David Egan and Sean Higgins all had decent chances but like our opponents failed to hit the target. As the half wore on our defence of Jamie Hogan, Padraig O ‘Connor, Jack Kelliher and Paul Nolan got on top and from here we pushed on for the rest of the match. A fantastic move involving Padraig at right back, Thomas Lenihan, Bobby O’Regan and David Egan ended up with a superb cross from the right finding David Murphy’s head and he scored. 2nd Half – The second half started as the first ended with us hunting for a goal and Thomas Dwyer was very dangerous on the left wing in this period of the game. We introduced ‘Frosty’ Ronan and Gary Nolan after 15 minutes of this half as one or two were flagging and both added impetus to the team. Despite our pressure we never got behind their defence on a regular basis and much of the play was in front of their box. On the counter we had to be careful of a couple of pacy forwards and we were lucky on one occasion in particular when a mistake left Eoghan in 1 to 1 situation again but they shot wide. From this on it got frenetic as we poured forward in search of a winner and eventually we got a penalty for a handball which Eoghan duly dispatched. We introduced Luke Dalton at this stage to hold the ball up and stop them from launching attacks from the back which he did very well. It was still not over as the ref played played 4 minutes injury time, Castlemaine threw their all into attack but we held out for the win. Well done to all involved and to all who supported us on the day.