Greyhound Bar Cup First Round
AC Athletic-4
Fenit Samphires-4
Daniel Clinton (2), Sean Ryan, Sean Allen
Our seniors could only manage a draw against a resilient AC Athletic, despite being four goals ahead early in the second half. It was a game that we dominated for 60 minutes but then completely crumbled for the last 30. We were in complete control from the start and moved the ball well which caused problems for our opponents. Our wingers, Sean Allen and Sean Foley, were particularly dangerous throughout the game as AC struggled to deal with their pace. We grabbed the opener when Daniel Clinton was taken down in the box and he stepped up himself to convert the penalty. A second goal followed soon after when Sean Ryan finished low to the net after tormenting the defenders with his pace. Pa McCarthy and Gary Nolan were seeing a lot of ball in the middle of the park as we dictated the game throughout the half. In goals, Barry Galvin was very quick off his line a number of times to decisively and bravely deny the AC strikers as they found themselves in a few one-on-one situations. However, Sean Allen ensured it would be 3-0 at half time when he headed in from a Peter McCarthy corner.
The second half started in much the same pattern with our back four of Klaudio Dema, Darren Lynch, Peter McCarthy and Rob Prendeville untested for the first ten minutes or so. We grabbed a fourth when Dano once again finished from the spot after another heavy challenge from our opponents. We should have closed the game out easily from here but it wasn’t to be as AC mounted a comeback. We introduced Bill Mullins, Thomas Phelan and Gordon Burrows in the second half to add some fresh legs to the effort. To their credit our opponents never gave up and clawed back four goals and managed to, unlike Steve Avery, get out of jail by sending the game to a replay.