NDSL Under 9B
Saturday, October 02, 2004
High
winds were the order of the day in Porterstown for a gruelling encounter between
the top two sides in this division. Swords showed their style going forward but
were a little too fond of leaving the boot in when Celtic attacked. Eve Farrelly was captain for the day. Although she was the only girl on the pitch, she proved she
was a match for any of the boys. Some
crunching tackles went in and it was, in one of those, that a Swords player had
to retire. Eve was assisted in
defence by Patrick Rocca, Danny Byrne and Dan Ring. They all read the game well and intercepted many attacks. The
ball wasn’t just booted away…teammates were picked out and the ball fed to
them. There were some excellent runs down the wing by Eve, Patrick
and Danny. Once Dan got the ball,
you could be certain he would use it intelligently.
Swords
opened the scoring after 5 minutes with some neat play outside the box. An
interchange of passes culminated in a fine goal to open their account. After
the break, Castleknock came storming back. Ryan
Moore Kearney, Phillip Fitzpatrick and Luke Henshaw worked hard to break through
but were chopped down as soon as they approached the goal. If
it was the Premiership, a few red cards would have been issued. Then,
against the run of play, from a tight angle, Swords notched up number two. They
applied more pressure on the Castleknock goal but Eoin Sweeney made some fine
saves.
Midfield was dominated by Tom Fogarty,
Eoghan O’Donuchu, Phillip and Danny. All had opportunities to score but the wind just seemed to
carry the ball away from goal. As
the game went on, Castleknock were getting stronger but a counter attack from
Swords nearly increased their lead when Eoin was beaten. However, Celtic have a new saviour, in the form of Danny
Byrne, who cleared a ball off the goal-line. Danny played all over the park
today and rightly earned the plaudits at the end of the game.
It
was a tough match for both sides but lessons have been learned and Swords will
know that Castleknock 9A’s are no pushover. We look forward to our next
encounter with them.
Team
: Eoin Sweeney,
Eve Farrelly(C), Patrick
Rocca, Eoghan O’Donuchu,
Dan
Ring, Tom Fogarty, Luke Henshaw, Danny Byrne, Ryan MooreKearney,
Phillip Fitzpatrick