Sat.22^nd March 2003

North Dublin League

Glebe North  1    Castleknock Celtic  2

Celtic develop the habit of Winning

It was like the Seventh Cavalry assault on the stronghold of Balbriggan, home of Glebe North Football Club.  Seven cars took their charges out via the M50 to North County Dublin for a 10am kick-off in this U-7 Beige game.

It was an early start but our lads and lassies were wide awake for the task ahead.  They immediately set out to put them under pressure.  Luke Henshaw was in the thick of the action from early on.  He had jinking runs, step-overs and close control that had the opposition looking on in amazement.  Well, it all paid off when, fittingly, Luke walked through the defence to score a well deserved goal after 5 minutes.  His Dad was delighted on the side-line and said it must be the "Super Milk" that helps him do the business.

Within a minute, completely against the run of play, Glebe's Number 7 had a tremendous run with the ball from the half-way line.  Hannagh Hanlon was in goal and did everything right.  As he approached her, she came out to narrow the angle, but the forward hit the ball to the right into the net for a fine goal.  Even Dean Kiely wouldn't have stopped that.

At the break, David urged his team to keep up the pressure and to continue to play as they had been.  Aidan O'Flaherty got stuck in to a few tackles and was not going to let anyone by him.  On 15 minutes, after another attack, the ball was hit out and up in the air.  Aidan chested it down, controlled it, beat 2 players and poked it into the net……class.  All hell broke loose on the side-line.  The smile on his Dad, Brendan's face was a sight to behold.  His Mum was equally proud.

As usual, any likely attack was broken up by Darragh McCaffrey and Tom Fogarty in defence.  It was a credit to them that the only shot on goal was the one Glebe scored.  Ross Ward, Eoin O'Dunnuchu and Anthony Healy also featured prominently in the game.

Ross Kennedy had a chance to score but was pulled back by a defender just as he was about to pull the trigger.  The Referee didn't see it.  Eve Farrelly had some excellent runs up the field with the ball.  She capped it off with a 'rasper' of a shot near the end of the game but it was stopped well by the keeper.

So, the game ended 2 -1 to Castleknock, which didn't reflect the amount of possession they had.  All the players gathered around for the Man of the Match award.  David praised all the players but picked out one player who had been outstanding for the past few weeks and was in tremendous form today.  He presented the trophy to Luke Henshaw.