Aghada u13 P2 football league vs Kinsale May 14th.

Aghada welcomed top of the table Kinsale to a balmy Rostellan on Monday night. With the club flag flying at half mast in a mark of respect to our clubman Podgie (Maurice) O’Keeffe so tragically lost to his family, friends and parish over the weekend, both teams stood respectfully for an impeccably observed minute’s silence in the centre of the main pitch.

Aghada started the game short of a couple of regulars so a number of U12s helped to make up the squad as Referee Jim Daly blew his whistle to start the game.

The home side tore out of the blocks. With the lads starting brightly, the visitors took time to settle and soon found themselves behind to a super first ever competitive score from Lachlan McCrae. With his other forwards Nicky, John, Sean O’Call, Jack F and Gavin mostly having the upper hand and midfielders Cian and Eric driving through time and again, the half time score was 2-6 2-0 with the visitors having slipped in just on the short whistle for their second goal. Our defence of Alan, Aaron K, Conor, Oscar, Fionn O’Con and Fionn O’Call was rock solid for the most part and had held firm to only concede 2 scores in that half and for both to be majors was a bit unluckily to be fair.

The second half was a different story as the visitors got a couple of goals in quick succession which settled them and Aghada found themselves pegged back for a period. True to their character though, they kept battling against a very strong physical side and got some scores of their own to bring the game right to the knife edge for the last 10 minutes. Keeper for the night Sean Santos (the Cat) O’Sullivan pulled off some super saves including a marvelous penalty save low to his left, proving himself a hero on the night. His monstrous kick outs to teammates helped the forward push and the home side leveled matters with a free having had numerous close calls with a number of shots blocked on the line and inside the 20m line. The final score was 5-7 6-4 and a point was the least these lads deserved. They really stepped up from their last performance and were unlucky to not take all the points against a very competitive side. The result is less significant though than the performance which was the lad’s best yet this season playing at this level. They’ve had a busy few days so deserve a rest at this point! Credit also to the visitors for their super contribution to an exciting game.

Every Aghada player played their part on the night and they can all be proud of a great team effort.

Scorers.
Lachlan McCrae        0-1
Jack B. Flynn.            3-1
Sean O’Callaghan    1-2
Eric Cunningham      0-1
Cian Hegarty.            0-2
Gavin Hill.                    1-0

Squad.

Sean Santos O’Sullivan, Alan O’Connell, Aaron Kearns, Conor Geary, Oscar Slye, Fionn O’Connor, Fionn O’Callaghan, Eric Cunningham, Cian Hegarty,

Sean O’Callaghan, John Walsh, Nicky Bertocci, Lachlan McCrae, Jack Flynn, Gavin Hill, Ronan Walsh, James Motherway, James Hurley, Hugh Mulcahy, Reuben Flynn