What a game we had in Christy Leahy park on a fresh Saturday morning, After 6 wins from 6 in the league (Division 1) we turned our attention to the cup where we came up against 3rd in the premier Division Killarney Athletic.
This was always going to be tough, but from the outset our boys controlled the whole game with quick sleek passing and movement. Our Keeper was injured before the game so in stepped Nathan Rogers for his first time in goals where he pulled off two great saves in the game, our defence was solid as a rock where Luke o Connell was outstanding ably assisted by Tom Flavin and Cillian Lynch.
The move of the first have started with Luke playing it out of the back to Samir on the right which played it into Mark upfront who held it up and played it to on running Sean o Connor who struck a lovely ball from outside the box to the bottom corner of the net. First half ended and we went in 1-0 up. It has to be said that Cian o Neill in the middle of the park was like a little terror and didn’t give the athletic players a sniff.
Second half started with us controlling the play again and came close twice to scoring again but Athletic nearly caught us on the break only for great defending by Luke and Ciaran O’Connor . We raced into attack with 12 minutes remaining when Ciaran played a lovely ball through only for the defender to handle the ball which he received a yellow for. From the free kick Sean O’Connor curled the ball around the wall and into the top corner what a goal . This made us empty the bench and all 3 subs came on to soak up the atmosphere. We controlled the tempo for the last 10 minutes and went out 2-0 winners which delighted the crowd and the boys were trilled to have a giant killing in the cup. Roll on round 2.
Match report by Declan O’Connell .
