Quarter Final - Mayobridge V Assan Gaels
St Patrick’s. Mayobridge (Down) 2-11 V Assan Gaels (Cavan) 1-7
Two goals from Ryan Brady sealed a deserved win for Mayobridge in the Devlin Motors Ulster U-21 Club Football Championship over Cavan amalgamation side Assan Gaels at Creggan Kickhams yesterday.
The corner forward bagged two majors in the second half to pull the Down champions away from the dogged Breffni boys who had taken the lead through a superb Oliver Smith strike in the 38th minute.
However the Cavan men added just two more points in the remainder of the game while Mayobridge tagged on 2-7 to take their place in the semi-final.
Assan Gaels opened the scoring after seven minutes, but Mayobridge rolled off four points on the trot to lead by 0-4 to 0-1 after 12 minutes, with Conal Poland adding two from play.
The pick of the first half scores came from Senan Gilchreest on 21 minutes to keep Assan Gaels in touch and although Caolan Gallagher’s excellent effort on 30 minutes gave the Down men a three-point lead, Darren Monaghan split the posts in injury time to leave the score 0-6 to 0-4 at the break in favour of Mayobridge.
Conleth O’Hare and Fitzsimons swapped points after the restart but Gaels then shot into the lead for the first time since the ninth minute when Smith fired to the Mayobridge net. Smith’s jinking run past three ‘Bridge players ended with an unstoppable shot of the underside of the bar for a 1-5 to 0-7 lead.
The reply was immediate from the Down men who had started to control midfield through the efforts of Keith Quinn and Jamie Barr. Gallagher stroked over at the other end to begin another roll of four unanswered scores. Fitzsimons stopped the rot for Assan Gaels but two Brady goals in the space of five minutes sealed his side’s place in the last four.
The first was an opportunist effort after intercepting a pass from Gaels keeper Conor Martin, and the second was the result of a pinpoint pass from Gallagher.
Fitzsimons fired over the last score of the game but Mayobridge were full value for their seven-point win, although manager Michael Walsh is expecting improvement from his charges next time out.
“We took a while to settle. It wasn’t the conditions for good football, we’d a huge breeze to contend with, the ground was wet and Ulster football is new to them. You could see from the way they played in the first half, we made a lot of mistakes but we settled down in the second half and ground out the win,” said Walsh.
“Hopefully now we’ll settle into the tournament. The whole way through the Down championship they have played well as a team, it was down to hard work and team performance and hopefully that will continue. No games are going to be easy.”
Mayobridge: S Strain; C Gribben, S McNamme, C Lynchehaun; M Annette (0-1), K McClorey, C Killen; J Barr, K Quinn; D Lynchehaun, C Gallagher (0-3), C O’Hare (0-5, 3f); R Brady (2-0), C Poland (0-2), P Gribben
Subs: R Mynes for C Killen, C Linden for P Gribben, R Lively for M Annette
Assan Gaels: C Martin; F Smith, A Smith, J Cunningham; S Gilchreest (0-1), G Denning, L McCabe; S Conaty, K McCabe; G Smith, C Conroy, O Smith (1-0); D Monaghan (0-1), E Fitzsimons (0-3, 1f), S Tierney (0-1
Subs: I Carolan for A Smith, R O’Connell for S Conaty
Referee: M Sludden (Tyrone)
Match Report by John Martin Photos by Seamus Loughran