Toal’s timely strike hands league strugglers a lifeline
DULEEK OMP UNITED 1 1
GARETH Toal struck an equaliser deep into stoppage time at the Tollstone on Sunday afternoon to salvage a point and give Duleek renewed hope of avoiding the drop to Division 1.
OMP, one of the other struggling teams in the Premier, were poised to return home with all three points but are now deep in the relegation mire themselves along with Duleek and a couple of other teams.
The one positive is that keeper Stuart Reynolds pulled off a double save to deny Carl Dowling.
Carter and Dowling had other glimpses of goal but failed to work Reynolds, and Osborne could have won it for 10-man Ardee towards full-time as his shot clipped the top of the crossbar.
In the circumstances both teams were happy enough with the result. Ardee should be able to pick up enough points from their games in hand to steer clear of relegation, while this was only Harps’ second competitive game of 2018 and they had six frontline players absent for various reasons. Kingscourt Harps are already doomed, having failed to win all season.
It was a cagey enough start to Sunday’s game, with so much at stake for both teams, and there were precious few opportunities in the first half until the 42nd minute when Duleek’s Cormac McGroggan went past two players to create a scoring chance, only to fire over the bar.
That miss came back to haunt the young striker as seconds later OMP were ahead. Gary Nugent perhaps should have cleared his lines, but was closed down and as the OMP player tried to go past him he was pulled back,
Star striker Guy Bates wasn’t available and they had to play centre-back Niall Levins in between the sticks, with all their goalkeepers absent.
ARDEE CELTIC: Stuart Reynolds; Robbie Reynolds, Niall Sharkey, Óisín McGee, Ciarán Clarke; Eddie Burke, Mikey Nulty, Conor McManus, Gareth Kane; Ross Gaynor; Darryn Gaynor. Subs: Stuart Osborne, Bryan O’Connor, Shawni Dowdall, Pierce Hawkins, Dylan Maher.
BOYNE HARPS: Niall Levins, Kevin Walsh (Barry Reynolds), Austin McCann, Luke McDonnell, James Traynor, Carl Dowling (Niall McCullough), Darren McCann, Gavin Brennan, Stephen Carter, Mickey Leech, Martin Kelly. David Woods, Cian Breen. resulting in a penalty.
OMP made no mistake and they took that slender lead into the half-time break.
On the restart Duleek had plenty of possession and passed the ball around with authority, but they lacked a cutting edge to open up an OMP side who were now set up to defend their lead.
With no sign of a breakthrough, manager Pete Brennan made three substitutions at the same time just past the 70-minute mark, and eventually he resorted to throwing Bryan Murphy up front im the hopes of causing more difficulty for the visitors.
After that Duleek did look a bit more threatening, but the game was in the final seconds of four minutes added time when Toal played a one-two with McGroggan before firing into the top corner for the equaliser.
The result gives Duleek much-needed confidence and belief going into their tough home fixture against leaders Trim Celtic next Sunday, with title-chasing Newfoundwell hoping Brennan’s men can do them a favour.
DULEEK: Mark Kelly, Chris McDonnell (Robbie Daly), Caelan Duff, Gary Nugent, Jamie Flaherty, Bryan Murphy, Matthew Noone, James Guilfoyle (James Burke), Alan Wilton (Gareth Toal), Cormac McGroggan, Barry Kavanagh.