Kilcoole beat

KILCOOLE ÉIRE ÓG 3-16 1-14

NEAR neighbours Kilcoole and Eire Óg faced off against each other in sunny Ashford on Saturday evening.

On a perfect evening for football, both teams served up a hard fought match that you would expect from near neighbours.

A purple patch for Kilcoole straight from the restart of the second half, that yielded 1-01 without reply, ultimately decided this game.

Danny Kavanagh was the first to raise a white flag in the second half, after a very patient build up by the Kilcoole players.

This stretched Éire Óg’s deficit to five. Within 30 seconds it was out to eight.

From the resulting kick out, the Kilcoole veteran himself Vinny Quigley plucked the ball from the sky and fed the very dangerous corner forward Jordan Murray who in turn fed Matthew Gilbert who calmly slotted the ball to the back of the Éire Óg net from a narrow angle. Éire Óg battled to the end but found the Kilcoole rearguard difficult to penetrate from play as Kilcoole dropped players back and hit Éire Óg on the counter attack.

There was little to separate the teams in the first half with both sides having purple patches.

Éire Óg got off to the perfect start as they were awarded a penalty inside 60 seconds when James Smullen’s rasping shot on goal was blocked by the flying boot of Lukie Reilly. Mr Reilly received a yellow card for his troubles.

Willie O’Hagen took the penalty but found Glen Tighe in the Kilcoole goal in fine form as he knocked the penalty around for a 45.

With the trusty left boot, Daniel Webb opened Éire Óg’s account and followed it up with a Willie O’Hagen free to open up a twopoint lead.

It took Kilcoole a while to settle as they tried to adjust to Willie O’Hagen dropping back as a sweeper for the Éire Óg outfit.

However, they did find their feet and opened up a four-point lead courtesy of a few beautiful points from play from Lee Dutton and Danny Kavanagh and also a goal from the before mentioned Kavanagh.

The goal came courtesy of a wonderful cross field ball from a sideline by Jack Bellamy, that was fielded by Kavanagh and on the third attempt he found the net.

Éire Óg were not done and responded well to the challenge that the favourites were placing in front of them, with Glen Tighe having to stretch high to knock a Conall Deeney effort over the bar.

Two minutes later Éire Óg were level. Kilcoole were turned over in the middle of the field and a quick attack resulted in Daniel Webb being free to blast the ball to the net past the isolated Tighe in the Kilcoole goal.

Éire Óg were on top at this stage, but their main scoring threat was coming for the accurate boot