Remember all, senior football Championship quarter final v Hollywood next Sunday the 31st August at 11a.m in Aughrim. Please support the team.
Meanwhile our senior football team hit the top of the Division 1A table on Friday night with a victory over An Togher in Roundwood. Considering we had a ropey start to the league, this is no mean achievement. We have three games to go. It promises to be an exciting close to the league. It has been a three horse race all season with Coolkenno the other candidates for promotion. We had lagged behind Coolkenno all season in third place due to an unmerciful 13 points hammering they gave us in South Wicklow on a Sunday morning back in April.
We met them in the return fixture in Greystones on Friday week last. It was a great contest. The background to the game was tense. The early season trimming rankled with the players. They wanted redemption from that performance. There was also the considerable matter of promotion at stake. It was exhilarating stuff from start to finish. They got a standing ovation at the end.
Coolkenno were ebullient with confidence and swaggered into a commanding lead with two stunning goals in the first ten minutes to leave our boys reeling. Our men rallied to the task.
They hung in there and the two point deficit at half time was testament to their nerves. There was no one player in that first half that saved them. To quote the philosopher Aristotle “it was a question of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts”. It didn’t get easier in the second half; both sides raised the bar even higher. Volatility bubbled beneath the surface as neither side were prepared to crack. It was no place for the faint hearted and the meagre crowd loved it. It wasn’t easy. We pulled it back to level with fifteen minutes to go only for our opponents to get two points ahead again. We rallied to level again, the penultimate point being a stunning effort from Darren Hayden from an acute angle right of the posts. Thus, the stage was set for a vignette from Daniel Woods. He had been awesome all evening. A free, a long way out that would have tested even the mighty Stephen Cluxton, was nonchalantly stroked over the bar with ease, considering it’s importance. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. We were in the lead for the first time in the game. A minute later the long whistle blew. We won on a scoreline of 0-14 to 2-7 (13).
The league game against An Togher was a much calmer affair although an edge was added due to the concession of two goals again early in the game that left us playing catch up. The Roundwood lads were ahead on a scoreline of 2-1 to 0-4 after 18 minutes. It was 2-2 (8) to 0-8 at half time. It ended in our favour 2-4 (10) to 1-15 (18). The game was notable for the spread of scorers, eight in total.
Declan O’Mahonys goal is a definite contender for goal of the season. Corner-back Justin O’Brien went on a trademark 70 metre run from his own back line, interchanging passes before drawing the full-back to leave O’Mahony free. A pinpoint fisted pass to Declan in space and he duly smashed the sweetest strike with his right foot from 30 metres out to the back of the net.
Well done to our Junior A football team on reaching the quarter final of their championship in the face of much adversity. The team was plagued with illness and work commitments. They started into the wind with 14 men against Carnew. A big thank you is extended to Stephen Mc Hugh who got an hour off work and turned up to make up the required 15 at the start of the second half. They trailed at the break but put in the performance of the season to run out winners.
Congratulations to senior football team manager Alan Costello and his partner Michelle on the birth of their first child Sophie Nancy on Tuesday of last week. She came home on Friday evening so Alan took the night off
