Hard working Fermoy

IT was easy to appreciate Fermoy’s delight after they came out on top in the county PIFC Round 1 clash with Macroom at Caherlag last Saturday evening.

The result extended their unbeaten run in championship football to seven games, but what made their victory especially satisfying was that it didn’t look on the cards at half-time.

Although they turned over trailing by just three points, 0-5 to 0-2, the 2015 intermediate kingpins had been forced to play second fiddle for much of the opening period, and it was obvious they needed to raise their performance significantly if they hoped to make up the leeway.

Within four minutes of the resumption, however, they had got back on terms, courtesy of a superb goal by full-forward Ruairi O’Hagan, whose input overall was instrumental in securing their ticket to Round 2A.

O’Hagan bagged all but a point of Fermoy’s total over the hour, but he wasn’t lacking support up front in the second half, most notably from the hard-working Kieran Morrison and Martin Brennan.

Elsewhere, Jack Hutchings was regularly seen to good effect at midfield, while Tomas Clancy was hugely influential at centre-back, as the Fermoy rearguard came up with most of the answers after the interval.

It was a different story in the first half when Macroom always moved menacingly in attack where Fintan Goold and David Goold carried the main threat in the corner forward berths, and Kieran Murphy got through an amount of effective work on the ‘40.

With Sean Kiely and particularly Philip Corrigan giving them an edge at midfield, Macroom applied the bulk of the pressure before the break, and, in truth, they looked much more assured as a unit than the North-Cork side.

Ironically, Fermoy started brightly enough, drawing first blood inside four minutes when centre-back Brian O’Sullivan made an excellent block to abort a promising Macroom raid and instigate a counter-attack which, with Tomas Clancy and Ruairi O’Hagan also involved, yielded a well-taken point by Ronan O’Callaghan.

They squandered a few early chances as well before Macroom settled to take a firm grip on the proceedings, so much so that Fermoy didn’t add to their tally until O’Hagan converted a free in stoppage time.

In the interim, Macroom had put five points on the board, with Fintan Goold, Kieran Murphy and Sean Kiely sharing three from play before Goold added a brace from frees to leave them 0-5 to 0-1 to the good with 20 minutes gone.

They weren’t flattered by their advantage at that juncture, and, with Goold looking very sharp in the right corner, it seemed as if there would be a lot more to come from their attack in the second half.

The decision to switch Tomas Clancy from midfield to centre-back worked a treat for Fermoy in the second half, however, as he exerted a major influence to bring badly-needed stability to their defence.

Padraig Clancy, who was Fermoy’s most impressive performer in the first half, continued to show up well on the right wing, while the tenacious Jeff Daly managed to keep a tighter rein on Fintan Goold.

Fermoy clearly needed to hit the ground running in the second half, but they wasted an early chance when Jack Hutchings was off-target from a long-range free.

They made a crucial breakthrough shortly afterwards when a delivery from Kieran Morrison