::: Gorey Celtic FC

Sunday 24th January 2010
All Blacks 1 - 0 Gorey Celtic

Celtic made the long journey south on Sunday to play Division 1 siade, All Blacks in the 1st Round of The Neil O'Sullivan Cup.
On arrival at Mayglass, the venue was shrouded in thick fog and a playing surface that was barely playable. A heavy overnight frost combined with a schoolboy game played 24 hours earlier made conditions very poor.

Celtic opened the brighter of the two teams, a Ger Carey shot , that went narrowly wide (15mins) and a Will Doyle free kick that was inches away from the target (20mins) were the closest we came to opening the scoring.
On 25 mins the All Blacks scored what turned out to be the winning goal. A 25 yard shot taking a wicked deflection of William Keogh, leaving Big Jack with no chance of saving. All Blacks went on to dominate the remainder of the 1st period

H.T. 1-0

Celtic regrouped at half time and came out looking solid and better organised. As the game progressed, the pitch really started to take its toll on proceedings, a number of times good moves were disrupted due to the ball getting stuck in the mud.
Wes Fitzpatrick and David O'Brien were brought into the game on 60 minutes in a double substitution. Within minutes of his entrance into the game Wes almost found an equaliser, a fierce volley from 18 yards hitting the crossbar, Celtic continued to push forward in search of a goal to take the tie into extra time and at times leaving themselves exposed to the counter attack.
The final minutes saw Celtic attack, playing three upfront but to no avail, the All Blacks defence held out for their victory.

A solid if not spectacular performance. Things could have worked out better if we could have scored during our early dominance.
The big winner on the day was the pitch. No yellow cards for either team in a good sporting contest.

Team: Big Jack, William Keogh, Dave Melia, Mark Tyndall, Dave Gahan, Craig Connor, William Doyle, Danny Reilly, Ger Carey, Tiernan O'Gara, Phelim Gallagher.

Subs: Paul Timmins for Keogh (30 mins, inj), David O'Brien for Carey (60 mins), Wes Fitzpatrick for Gallagher (60 mins)