‘Well fume as cup dream shattered

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NEWFOUNDWELL boss Danny Gartland and his players were left deeply frustrated as their Tully Bookmakers Cup hopes were extinguished in a controversial quarter-final clash on the MDL Astro on Friday night.

The Drogheda club were leading going into the last two minutes of normal time thanks to Jordan Duffy’s strike, only to concede an equaliser from a well-worked free kick. But it was in extra time when a couple of refereeing decisions infuriated the ‘Well, and the first of those resulted in what turned out to be the winning goal.

Gartland and co-manager Paul Crowley had to select from a squad minus Ross Reid, Martin Kelly, Tom Reilly, Martin Kelly (all injured) plus Adam O’Connor (suspended), and they then lost striker Ciaran Carroll to an ankle ligament injury after only 25 minutes.

Shortly before his departure Carroll had been fouled in the penalty area by the Cosmos keeper, but he opted to stay on his feet and the referee allowed play to continue.

It was Carroll’s replacement, 18-year-old Duffy, who eventually made the breakthrough with a great finish in the 55th minute, and Cosmos responded by bringing on former League of Ireland star Alan Murphy. The Drogheda native had a hand in the 88th-minute equalising goal for the Leinster Junior Cup semi-finalists as his free kick was eventually finished to the net.

Early in extra time the ‘Well indicated that they wanted to make a substitution, but when play stopped following a foul by Kevin Bull the match official didn’t signal for the change to take place.

He booked Bull for the challenge, and before the centre-half had the opportunity to return to his position Cosmos had taken a quick free kick from which they scored to go 2-1 ahead.

Newfoundwell’s sense of injustice was even more keenly felt when they had what they claimed was a perfectly good goal disallowed in the dying minutes of the second period of extra time.

John Kermode supplied a pass to substitute Gaz Smith whose shot was brilliantly parried by the Cosmos keeper into the path of Brian Kermode. He fired the rebound towards goal and wheeled away to celebrate even before the ball was cleared by a Navan player - from behind the line according to Newfoundwell.

The exuberant ‘scorer’ actually took his jersey off as part of the celebration, only for the match official to rule that the ball hadn’t crossed the line, and with that decision went Newfoundwell’s hopes of forcing a penalty shootout to decide the outcome.