On
the 25th minute in a fine move involving Quinn and Gary Masterson,
who had a wonderful game, played inside to Paddy Andrews and in typical fashion
blasted home from the edge of the box to fire Celtic into a well deserved lead.
12/4/03
SFAI All-Ireland
Lourdes Celtic 2 Castleknock Celtic 1
14A
glorious in defeat as their great SFAI Cup run comes to an end in extra-time in
Sundrive Park on Saturday afternoon (12/04/03).
Playing
a DDSL Premier team is always a great challenge for a parish team like
Castleknock but when it comes to the last 16 of the SFAI Cup such challenge is
all the more daunting. However, the Castleknock 14As, playing away to Lourdes Celtic in the sometimes hostile
atmosphere of Sundrive Park looked every bit a Premier side as they took the
game to the home-side. Roared on by great Castlekock support on the line and
powered on by Byrne, Daly and Nolan in midfield, they put some fine moves
together and had their opponents
chasing the game from the start.
After
20 minutes, Lourdes’ left midfielder who had
been playing second-fiddle to Jonathan Quinn deliberately went to take Jonathan
out of the game with a most reckless late tackle. It should have been a straight
red but the Ref awarded a yellow. The tackle took a lot of the edge off Jonathon
who played on bravely and the offender was later to “walk” in the
second-half of extra time for a second yellow.
On
the 25th minute in a fine move involving Quinn and Gary Masterson,
who had a wonderful game, played inside to Paddy Andrews and in typical fashion
blasted home from the edge of the box to fire Celtic into a well deserved lead.
The
Lourdes fight back which was expected at the start of the second half never
materialized and the Castleknock rear-guard of McAuley, Arkins, Moriarty despite his injury, Masterson and
Alan Murphy in goal dealt with everything that Lourdes threw at them.
Unfortunately,
on the hour mark the Castleknock concentration started to show some lapses and
unfortunately Lourdes broke from deep in their own half to find the Castleknock
net from close range for the equalizer and to take the game to extra time.
Danny
O’Mahony who had battled bravely despite considerable back pain went off and
thoughts of Annacotty came flooding back when Danny Sweeney came on.
However, it wasn’t to be Castleknock's day when Lourdes hit the winner in the
8th minute of extra time and held out despite the mighty efforts of
Castleknock to get back on terms.
But
the Castleknock lads did themselves proud and walked off Sundrive Park with a
lot of pride after what this reporter regards as their finest team performance
ever.