Playing two U12 matches in parallel; St Brigids and Rossa served up a great display of underage football at Musgrave park in round 3 of the Go-Games.
Match 1
A thrilling 50 minutes of football from both teams saw St Brigid’s continue their winning streak on a glorious spring evening at Musgrave Park on Friday night. Rossa started strongly putting two points over in the first 8 minutes, St Brigid’s soon settled into the game with good clean scores from Shane Moran and James Smith. They continued the pressure and dominance through points from Michael Cummings, Rory Smyth and great goals from Peter Lavery and Joseph Finnegan. Peter Webb was strong in midfield until he had to leave with a painful twisted elbow. Rossa pushed the game at the beginning of the second half scoring some fine points and a goal but again St Brigid’s held strong in defence with Frank McCormack and Conor King. Tiernan Cahill in goals made some great saves and clever kickouts to the wings for Joseph Finnegan who moved into midfield. Peter Lavery, Paul Stores, Patrick Finnegan and Enda Kelly McCann all battled hard and fought for every ball making some super scores. All in all a fantastic display of football and team effort from both sides.
St Brigid’s 5-8 Rossa 4-3.
Match 2
This match was a tremendous game of end to end football. Rossa settled quicker and their constant pressure was rewarded by an excellent goal. However, St Brigids soon began to find their stride and scored a number of fine long range points. Dermot McMenanim scored an excellent point from the narrowest of angles and a great team move from backs to forwards, involving Finbar Devlin and John Duffy set up Neil O’Reilly for a fine score. However, Rossa were constantly dangerous and scored two more fine points from play. After a shaky start there was only a point in it at half time – this was in favour of Rossa; 0:4 to 1-2.
The second half saw non-stop action with a further 21 scores – the majority of which were from play. St Brigids were determined to get off to a good start and midfield now started to get on top. Daire McGarvey started the scoring with a well taken goal which was quickly followed by another long range point from Neil O’Reilly. However, back came Rossa with a carbon copy of their first goal – another fine fist to the net. Rory McAllister in nets for St Brigids had an excellent game and his kickouts repeatedly found St Brigids players in space on the wings. Further scores flowed from the on form trio of Daire McGarvey, Dermot McMenamin and Neil O’Reilly. Edward Gildea in midfield also got through a mountain of work. In defence, Callum Power put in a man of the match display putting in countless saving tackles and repeatedly breaking up dangerous Rossa attacks. Andrew McDowell and Paul McCullagh on the left side of defence also kept a very tight rein on their opponents and showed very cool composure when often found to be literally the last line of defence. However Rossa rallied and notched up a number of unanswered points to close the gap. This set up an exciting finish and St Brigid’s looked to have the match won when Dermot McMenanim crashed an unstoppable pile driver into the roof of the net after a fine high field catch in the Rossa penalty box. However, St Brigids could not capitalise on this momentum and a little over carrying of the ball in the forward line saw a number of good opportunities go begging. This kept the door open to Rossa which to their credit they seized and finished strongly to add an another goal and two points to their score to a single further point from St Brigid’s. When the final whistle went, a draw; 2:13 to 3:10; was a very fair result for two excellent teams who played the match in the best of sporting spirit.
