Hollywood get

HOLLYWOOD ASHFORD 3-13 1-7

HOLLYWOOD overcame a slow start to record a comfortable enough victory over last year’s junior champions Ashford in this D’Arcy Sand IFC group 1 match in Joule Park, Aughrim on Saturday evening.

The west men had too much fire power up front, as the lethal left boot of Tony Hannon did a lot of damage, and after a shaky enough opening ten minutes they were rock solid at the back with full back Harry Wilson leading the way as he won countless balls and burst out time and again from defence.

Ashford were beaten by the better side but will be bitterly disappointed.

After racing into a three points to no score lead they allowed a slow starting Hollywood a way into the game with a number of poor balls or turnovers in succession.

At times they looked dangerous when they managed to string a few passes together but more often than not their attacks came to a halt because of a miss placed or mistimed ball.

This allowed Hollywood to steady the ship and there was a sense that once they got a little bit ahead there was only going to be one winner as they looked a more complete team throughout the field as you would expect from a team narrowly relegated from senior last year against a newly-promoted side.

Although well beaten in the end there seemed to be a lot to take out of the game for Ashford.

They worked hard throughout and managed to get in behind Hollywood on a couple of occasions but unfortunately for them some of their better footballers probably didn’t have their best games on the day.

The game began with a couple of brilliant blocks from Ronan Sweeney and Thomas Kearns as the Ashford backs let Hollywood know they would not be getting anything easy.

Aaron Nugent won a free which he shot just wide from but it wasn’t long before the first score arrived as midfielder Gavin Weir floated over a point after five minutes. Brian Shannon then hit over a beauty after being expertly picked out by Ross Quinn.

Ashford’s perfect start was completed when Brian Coen split the posts from a free and for the first 15 minutes it was all one way traffic as the men in maroon and black were cleaning up at midfield and Hollywood couldn’t seem to get into any sort of rhythm.

Hollywood finally got on the score sheet after a sloppy Ashford hand pass paved the way for Ciarán Tyrell to hit over a point.

Another mistake led to Hannon