Samphires 2 – Park 5: Our 16s run in the Tucker Kelly Cup finally ended at the hands of national cup finalists St Brendan’s Park in blustery conditions last Thursday evening in Fenit. The strong crosswind made it difficult to get the ball down and play but both teams did very well to serve up an entertaining game. We had as expected less of the ball than our opponents but we were compact in defence and kept them at arms length from our goals for a lot of the game. Indeed we were 1 up at half time after a defensive lapse by the Park let Oisin O’Brien in and he made no mistake. In the second half the bigger Park team got more to grips with the elements and as the half wore on we tired a little but that was enough and they forced 2 goals after 15 minutes. We got more into it then but we just couldn’t get past a solid defence. They scored a third goal after 25 minutes after some untypical defending by us on our endline. They quickly added a 4th on the counter as we pushed on but eventually we got our reward after Thomas Lenihan and Bobby O’Regan combined to play a beautifully weighted pass just beyond their defence. Christopher Murphy despite having cramp was on to it like quicksilver and dinked it over the advancing keeper and tapped it in to the empty net. We conceded another in the last minute needlessly but it is hard to apportion blame as everybody had given everything they had for the cause. Well done to all our team for their brave performance against a good team who no doubt will be favourites to win the cup.
Dara O Connor,Christopher Murphy,Sean Higgins,
Bobby O Regan,Jack MacCarthy,Thomas Lenihan,David Lenihan,Brian O’Regan,
Oisin O Brien,Sean Donnellan,Ciaran Carmody,Cormac O Brien.