Joseph’s grind out win

St Joseph’s St Bride’s 1-8 0-7

ST JOSEPH’S opened their Division 2 League campaign with a hard-earned win against a well organised St Bride’s team in Pairc an Chuinnigh on Saturday evening.

The Bride’s opened brightly and Robert Sansom in the Joes goal was called into action in the very first minute when he dived to his left to steer a goal-bound effort clear of goal.

The Joes hit the front in the sixth minute when David Mernagh set up Derek Mulligan who rounded his man and calmly planted the ball to the right of Alan Meegan in the Bride’s goal.

The Bride’s responded within a minute with their first score, a point from Sean Marry, and Marry doubled the Bride’s tally with his second on nine minutes and the sides were level when Ross Kehoe added a third.

On 12 minutes Paddy Reilly cut through the Joes defence to set up Conail Devin and his goal-bound effort skimmed the crossbar to put the Bride’s ahead 0-4 to 1-0. The Bride’s continued to shade the possession and the Joes had to wait until the 19th minute to register their second score, a point from a 40-metre Conal O’Hanlon free.

Craig Doherty put the Joes ahead on 23 minutes and on the stroke of half-time Conal O’Hanlon landed a free to send his side in leading by 1-3 to 0-4.

Alan Quigley opened the second-half scoring with a point from a 45-metre free for the Joes, but that was cancelled out by a free from half that distance from Conail Devin.

The next four points were shared to see the Joes retain the advantage at 1-6 to 0-7, before the Darver and Dromiskin outfit increased their lead to three points when O’Hanlon hit the target.

Both sides had their chances in the final 1-0 minutes, but there was to be just a single score -a superb point from wide on the right by Derek Mulligan for the Joes - to secure victory for the Cluskey Park men.