Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
‘RED’ LETTER DAY AS YEATS CLAIM CROWN
Wicklow 0-14 Sligo 2-10
NIALL MURPHY blasted 1-4 at Croke Park to secure the NFL Division 4 title for
Sligo – and dedicated the win to his late team-mate Red Og Murphy.
Sligo trailed at half-time but turned things around impressively with a third quarter scoring blitz.
Paul Kilcoyne (inset) netted during that secondhalf siege while Sean Carrabine and Luke Towey produced big performances overall too for the Yeats County.
Sligo will have little time to savour the win as they’ll head to London next Saturday to open their Connacht SFC campaign.
The win was an ironic one for Sligo manager Tony McEntee who got one over his old Crossmaglen Rangers and Armagh ally Oisin McConville, the Wicklow manager.
Sligo captain Murphy emotionally dedicated the success to ex-team-mate Murphy who passed away last year, stating that ‘days like this were made for Red Og’.
Wicklow didn’t lose any face during the battling defeat and will get their own Championship campaign up and running against Carlow next weekend in Leinster.
They were by far the brighter starters here, putting four points on the board before the favourites had even opened their account through free-taker Murphy in the 16th minute.
Kevin Quinn’s fourth point for Sligo in the 26th minute came from a free after being pulled down himself by Sligo’s Eddie McGuinness who was shown a black card for the foul.
It was the second point that Sligo conceded from a short kick-out that went awry.
They collected themselves impressively though and Murphy suddenly burst into life with 1-1 approaching the halfhour mark, the goal from Murphy, to turn it into a contest again.
Suddenly there was just a point in it though Wicklow stretched the gap again with a Mark Jackson point from a ‘45 to lead 0-8 to 1-3 at the break.
They got the margin out to three after the restart when Eoin Darcy clipped one over from a free.
But Wicklow didn’t score again until the
52nd minute as Sligo completely took over with that brilliant third quarter, including the 43rd minute Kilcoyne goal.
It amounted to a 1-4 blitzkrieg in the space of just eight minutes which went a long way towards winning it.
SLIGO: D Lyons; E Lyons, E McGuinness, N Mullen (0-1); P McNamara, B Cox, L Towey (0-1); P Kilcoyne (1-0), C Lally (0-1); P Spillane (0-1), S Carrabine
(0-2, 1f), D Quinn; N Murphy (1-4, 1f, 1m), P O’Connor, K Cawley.
Subs: M Gordon for Quinn 39, A Reilly for O’Connor 57, G O’Kelly Lynch for Cawley 63, M Walsh for Spillane 65.
WICKLOW: M Jackson (0-3, 1f, 2 45); E Murtagh, M Stone, J McCall; C
McDonald, P O’Keane, T Maher; JP Hurley (0-1), P O’Toole; A Maher, M Kenny (0-1), D Fitzgerald; D Healy (0-1), K Quinn
(0-5, 2f, 1m), E Darcy (0-2, 2f).
Subs: K Furlong for McCall 52, Z Cullen for A Maher 53, C O’Sullivan (0-1, 1f) for Fitzgerald 57, F O’Shea for T Maher 60.
P Faloon (Down).