Greenfield win Winter League opener

SUNDAY morning saw the return of the North Louth Winter League as last year’s treble winners, Greenfield, took on Castletown Knights in Muirheavna Mor.

From the start Castletown’s energy was brighter than Greenfield and this led to a dominance in midfield from Chris Grimes who was pulling the Castletown strings. Along with the dangerous Daniel Novak they were causing problems for the Greenfield rearguard, but were kept to long distance shots. Then they broke the deadlock. A long ball through the middle caused confusion and hesitation between the Greenfield centre half ’s and Aaron Rice ran unopposed towards the Greenfield goal and coolly slotted passed Eamon Roe.

This seemed to rally the Greenfield men and they were soon level as Darren Callan fed Aidan McGuiness and his shot found the bottom corner from the edge of the box to make it 1-1. The turning point of the game was when a long punt up field by the Greenfield keeper was seized upon by Lee Wright and he was bundled over in the box for a penalty but even more heartache for Castletown came as Conor Murray was sent off for arguing with the referee. Lee Wright slotted the resulting penalty to make it 2-1.

The second half was mostly Greenfield’s as they made the extra man advantage pay with further goals from Chris Mullan and a second from Aidan McGuiness. So the final score was 4-1 with the result not doing justice to Castletown’s first half performance.

Elsewhere the results were as follows: Carlingford 4 Haynestown 5; Ravensdale 3 Ramparts 2; Glen United 3 Edentubber 2; and Faughart 5 Setanta 1.

A full round of matches will take place in the second round of the North Louth Winter League this coming Sunday. The fixtures are as follows; Carlingford v Greenfield; Ramparts v Castletown; Edentubber v Haynestown; Faughart v Glen United; Setanta v Ravensdale.