The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Legion win spiky game
SENIOR CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP GROUP 1 ROUND 1 Legion 0-11 Kerins O’Rahillys 1-6
HAVING come up agonisingly short against their Killarney neighbours the previous week, Legion dusted themselves down from that defeat to bounce back with a two-point win over O’Rahillys in a spiky encounter that saw each side have a player sent off, as well as Legion manager Stephen Stack being ordered outside the perimeter fence.
After a fairly dull and forgettable first half that saw the teams share 10 points evenly between them, this contest exploded to life right from the start of the second half starting with the black card dismissal of O’Rahillys forward John Ferguson. Three minutes later Con Barrett, introduced for O’Rahillys at halftime, took a pass from midfield colleague Gavin O’Brien and smashed the ball past Brian Kelly to make it 1-5 to 0-6 for the Tralee men. A couple of minutes later referee Mike Hennessy was ordering Stephen Stack outside the wire after the Legion manager had overstepped the mark with his criticism of the match official.
Stack had barely made his way down beside the clubhouse end goals when Legion centre-back Damien O’Sullivan was following his manager out of the game after an apparent strike on an opponent right in front of Hennessy.
Within a couple of minutes O’Rahillys numerical advantage was wiped out when Jack Savage was shown a second yellow card, with Hennessy losing patience with the player’s over-zealousness in the tackle.
By the three-quarter mark the game settled down to some football, at which stage O’Rahillys had lost O’Brien to an ankle injury and Conor Keane converted a free to bring Legion to within one point.
Legion’s half time substitute, Thomas Moriarty, first an equalising point but from the restart O’Rahillys corner back Cormac Coffey fired over a score from distance and it was clear this game was going down to the wire.
Keane converted another free to nudge Legion back in front, and in the 57th minute - after the referee had initially signalled a penalty for a technical foul in the large square - James O’Donoghue converted the 21-metre free kick correctly awarded for the infraction to put Legion 0-10 to 1-6 ahead. Without O’Brien and Savage on the field O’Rahillys lacked that bit of dynamism to create much in attack, and it was left to Legion wing-back, Darragh O’Doherty, to raid forward to land his second point to secure the win in additional time.
The first half had seen O’Rahillys - playing without David Moran and Tommy Walsh for the second week in a row - take a 0-3 to 0-1 lead at the quarter mark, and still lead 0-5 to 0-2 after 20 minutes, which could have been more but for a super double save by Brian Kelly, who first blocked Jack Savage’s shot and then parried Tom Hoare’s shot over the bar.
Two scores from O’Donoghue and another from Damien O’Sullivan hauled Legion back to parity at the interval, but it wasn’t until the second half that all the game’s talking points bubbled up, before Legion scrambled the victory that leaves all four teams in Group 1 almost as inseparable as they were before a ball was kicked.
LEGION: Brian Kelly, Podge O’Connor 0-1, Danny Sheehan, Rob Leen, Darragh O’Doherty 0-2, Damien O’Sullivan 0-1, Jonathan Lyne, Billy Maguire, Padraig Lucey, Kieran Slattery, James O’Donoghue 0-4 (2f), Jack O’Neill, Finbarr Murphy, Peter McCarthy, Conor Keane 0-2f. Subs: Cian Gammell for F Murphy (23), Thomas Moriarty 0-1 for P McCarthy (ht), Kevin Breen for Slattery (52).
KERINS O’RAHILLYS: Gary Kissane, David Murphy, Ross O’Callaghan, Cormac Coffey 0-1, Darragh McElligott, Shane Brosnan, Karl Mullins, Sean Walsh, Gavin O’Brien, Ryan Carroll, Gearoid Savage, Jack Savage 0-3 (2f), John Ferguson, Tom Hoare 0-1, Barry John Keane 0-1. Subs: Con Barrett 1-0 for S Walsh (ht), Danny O’Sullivan for J Ferguson (b/c, 32), Sean Collins for G O’Brien (inj, 46), Rory O’Connor for R Carroll (inj, 59), Aaron Roche for G Savage (60).
REFEREE: Mike Hennessy (Ballyduff)