| U13 Footballers - February 26 2011 |
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| Written by Ger Kirwan |
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The U13 footballers played out a thrilling game against Naomh Barrog in round 3 of the football grading league on February 26 in Pairc Ui Bhriain. In their last game Barrog scored 13-14 against their opponents so the team, and particularly the backs, knew they had a mammoth task on their hands to keep the free-scoring Barrog forwards at bay.
The game started at a frantic pace and Olaf’s were first on the attack when Eoin Foley won the ball from the throw in and found Fiachra O’Sullivan in space. Fiachra danced around a couple of Barrog defenders and gave a lovely pass to Glenn Soraghan who slotted over his, and Olaf’s, first point of the game. The game maintained this pace throughout the first half. Barrog slotted over 2 points and then scored a goal to put them 4 points up. On the next attack, Fiachra O’Sullivan won a ball out on the wing and again beat 2 Barrog defenders. He was dispossessed by a third Barrog defender but Fiachra was determined that he wasn’t going to be beaten and he fought hard and won back the ball. He gave a sublime pass to Eoin Foley who slotted the ball to the net to reduce the margin to 1 point. Olaf’s next score saw Matthew O’Ceallaigh flicking the ball from a Barrog’s defender. The ball fell beautifully to Jack Dalton who finished it to the net. Barrog responded by taking control for the remainder of the half when they scored 2-6 without reply. Team managers Stephen Stapleton and Cathal Soraghan introduced Matthew Deering to the back line and moved Conor Kirwan to centre half back to mark the Barrog centre-half forward who was doing most of the damage. This move stemmed the supply of ball to the Barrog forward’s. Any balls that were played in were quickly kicked out again by Andrew Hayes, Tom McGurk, Alex Start and Dara Coleman. Olaf’s finished the half with a point from Matthew O’Ceallaigh, 2 points from Sean McDaid and a point from Fiachra O’Sullivan to see them trailing by 3-8 to 2-5.
At half time Rory Gallagher was brought into the backs and Conor Brady and Cian DeBurca were introduced to the forwards. The second half saw the lead changing a number of times. During the second half Olaf’s scored a remarkable 4-6 with Eoin Foley scoring 3 goals to bring his total for the game to 4 goals. Glenn Soraghan scored 1-2 to bring his tally for the day to 1-3. Sean McDaid scored another point as did Fiachra O’Sullivan. Conor Brady and Joseph Rafferty scored a point each to bring the Olaf’s total to 6-11. The backs continued their tenacious defending and only conceded 2-4 in the second half. As stated earlier, the backs played excellently and all present agreed that Matthew Deering was the deserving winner of the “Man of the Match” award. Well done Matthew! The panel on Saturday was Cian Power-Kelly, Andrew Hayes, Conor Kirwan, Tom McGurk, Alex Start, Jamie Deasy, Dara Coleman, Eoin Foley (4-0), Joseph Rafferty (0-1), Sean McDaid (0-3), Tom Keane, Fiachra O’Sullivan (0-2), Glenn Soraghan (1-3), Jack Dalton (1-0), Matthew O’Ceallaigh (0-1), Rory Gallagher, Conor Brady (0-1), Cian DeBurca and Matthew Deering.
Next weekend the team has 2 games when they travel to play Fingallians on Saturday and play St. Jude’s at home on Sunday. The game against Jude’s is a re-fixture from the game that was cancelled on February 12 and must to be played on Sunday so the seeding for the league can be determined by CCC2.
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