Fair play Drogheda as they win award!
RANKED the lowest of the teams in their group, the Drogheda Emerging Talent Programme squad excelled themselves at last week’s Kennedy Cup by reaching a final and earning the tournament’s SFAI Fair Play Award.
The Boynesiders headed to Limerick with some very tough opposition in waiting. The other teams in Group 8 - Cork, Waterford and Sligo/Leitrim - had only lost once between then in the interleague games before the Kennedy competition, so the coaching team knew the challenges in waiting.
Preparations had gone really well, with recent wins against Midlands, Longford, Cavan/ Monaghan and local neighbours Dundalk, and all the players were fit and looking forward to the challenge ahead.
The group stage weas tough, but the Drogheda team challenged and gave the higher seeded teams a few scares during these games. Excellent performances against Cork and Waterford in particular unfortunately yielded little return, but the squad remained very positive.
That positivity shone through in their next game, the Trophy quarter-final against Longford, as the midlanders were put to the sword with a convincing 4-1 victory thanks to goals from captain Cathal O’Reilly (2), Liam Flynn and Sean O’Driscoll.
Coach Dean Morgan had spent a lot of time on the training ground working on set plays and that effort paid off in style with a fine corner set-piece to get the teameam off the mark.
O’Reilly’ss first goal alsoo won ‘Goall of the Day’, highlighting that this squad really couldd compete with the veryery best the countryuntry has to offer.
Droghedaa really shone in thishis game, with superb performances from the whole squad, and the momentum carried on into the Trophy semi-final against Roscommon.
Not many gave this squad a chance, but another fantastic free kick from captain O’Reilly and a powerful run and finish by Liam Flynn secured a 2-1 win and a finals-day Trophy showdown with Galway, something the backroom team had set as their benchmark for the tournament when the sea- son kicked off.
Playing on the last day of Kennedy Cup week was a real thrill for the whole squad. Unfortunately, the opposition Galway proved too tough a nut to crack, winning out 3-1.
However, yet again this Drogheda squad proved their battling qualities by pushing them to the very end, the highlight being Liam Flynn’s third goal of the tournament (matching captain O’Reilly) with a superb curling effort into the top corner.
Despite narrowly llosing on that last day, this Drogheda squad excexcelled in performance, formanperformance, attitude and sportsmanship, shipsportsmanship, highlighted witwith them being ingbeing named as winwinners of the toutournament’s SFSFAI ‘Fair Play’ awaaward.
TThis was a fantasfantastic acknowledgement edgemacknowledgement of the endless eeffort put in by the Drogheda League ETP team, driven on by MarkMa Costigan, Keith Wallace and Robbie Synnott and it was a very proud moment when manager Ken Kelly collected the trophy on the ETP’s behalf.
This, in addition to recent Leinster finals for the U-12s and U-13s, shows that this ETP team is going from strength to strength.
The squad for 2018, who finished the tournament ranked 26th of the 32 teams, represented the Drogheda League with players from Drogheda Town, Termonfeckin, Albion, Duleek and Walshestown.
Many of the players had a constant stream of family and friends attend the games in Limerick and this support was very much appreciated by all the players and management team. DROGHEDA: