St Michael’s 5 – 9 St Mary’s 2 – 7
St Michaels continued their impressive run in the Dalton Cup campaign with a good win over St. Mary’s Magherafelt. The match was played in ideal conditions on the artificial surface at Garvaghey. However, don’t be fooled by this score line, indeed the outcome of this match was in the balance until five minutes from the end.
It was St Mary’s who had the blistering start and raced into an early lead when they scored two well worked goals in the first seven minutes. However, St Michaels grew into the game and got a lucky break when Cormac McCauley was in the right place to collect a long shot that came off the post and crash the ball to the net. At this stage, St Mary’s were playing good football and it was against the run of play when that man again, Cormac McCauley was fortunate to get on the end of a long ball and slot home a good goal.
As the first half progressed there were positive signs that St Michaels were getting to grips with the short running game of St Mary’s and started pushing up on their kick outs. At half-time St Marys were leading by a point, 2-4 to 2-3 and still all to play for in the game. In the second half, the superior fitness of the St Michael’s boys was evident as they enjoyed their best spell of the game. Cathair Leonard and the hard working Fionan O’Brien scored good points. Kostadin Nikolov was doing very well at midfield and winning lots of possession and supplying good passes for the inside forwards. During this spell, Justin McDade was freed to score a well worked goal. Indeed later it was Justin again who was awarded a penalty when he was pulled down in the square, Diarmaid King slotted home the penalty against a very impressive St Mary’s keeper. Kostadin killed of the game with five minutes to go when he worked hard on the left wing to score an impressive individual goal.
So good credit to all the St Michaels team for winning a game where for long spells in the first half in particular they looked under pressure. In this game all the backs can be well pleased with their efforts, the full back line of hard tackling Caolan Swift, brave Ultan O’Reilly and the very fast Ethan Prunty worked really well as a unit and Micheal O’Flanagan is now perfecting his sweeper role. So a good win and next week it’s the unbeaten St Patricks College Cavan.