Home is not so sweet
ARDEE CELTIC MUIRHEVNAMOR 0 3
ARDEE Celtic suffered their second home league defeat in 72 hours as last season’s champions Muirhevnamor collected all three points at Townparks on Friday night.
Conor Lynch’s charges had gone down 3-2 to OMP in a bad-tempered game on Tuesday night that saw three red cards - two of those to the visitors - yet it was nine-man OMP who snatched the winning goal with a controversial penalty eight minutes into stoppage time.
On Friday it was another tale of controversy and missed opportunities as the Dundalk men boosted their title prospects by taking home all three points.
There was little separating the sides in the early stages, with the first chance falling to Ardee when Ross Gaynor played in brother Darryn who went one-on-one with Michael Cooney and had his shot saved by the netminder.
James McMullen then blazed over for the hosts, but right on the 45-minute mark Niall Sharkey’s late challenge in the area resulted in a penalty to the visitors which was dispatched past Stuart Reynolds by Billy Smith. Moments later the scorer struck the upright, but there remained just a goal between them going into the half-time break.
Former Dundalk and Drogheda United star Tiarnan Mulvenna then made it 2-0 just before the hour-mark when he escaped from the Ardee defence and bore down on goal before finishing neatly over Reynolds.
Either side of the two goals, Cooney denied Ross Gaynor on two occasions and pushed away a dangerous cross-ball from Lorcan Myles before Wayne Reilly saw his rebound attempt blocked.
Ardee were just about in touch at that stage, but any hope of a comeback was extinguished on 75 minutes when Mickey O’Kane and Smith linked up and the latter fired home with his left foot.
ARDEE CELTIC: Stuart Reynolds, Robbie Reynolds (Darren Clarke), Niall Sharkey, David Fairclough, Ciaran Clarke (Graham Tighe), Mikey Nulty (Wayne Reilly), Paul Matondo, Ross Gaynor, James McMullen (Stuart Osbourne), Gareth Kane, Darryn Gaynor (Lorcan Myles).