Rockcorry 1-8 Doohamlet 1-8

McGuigan Builders Intermediate Football Championship Clash – “Ends All Square”

We locked horns with Doohamlet in the first round of the McGuigan Builders intermediate championship campaign last Friday evening and at the end of, at times a very scrappy but entertaining, game of football it ended all square Rockcorry 1-8 Doohamlet 1-8. The game was by no means an epic as the quality of football on display was not the highest standard but there was no shortage of effort and determination from the players and as expected there was very little between the sides and Doohamlet just shaded the opening half and at the interval they led by the narrowest of margins 0-5 to 1-3. Despite creating chances early in the second half we found ourselves trailing by four points as Doohamlet were more clinical with their scoring chances and led 0-5 to 1-6 after ten minutes. At this stage we appeared to be dead and buried as nothing was working but to the lads credit they showed they had fire in their bellies and continued to battle away and an inspirational point from Noel Carroll midway through the second half kick started our comeback and when Martin Carroll was fouled outside the forty-five metre line Mark Daly glided over a fabulous long range free-kick to reduce the gap back to 0-2. Both teams exchanged scores before the turning point of the game arrived in the 25^th minute when Johnny Reilly was brought down in the large parallelogram and Mark Daly showed nerves of steel and coolly converted the spot kick to put us ahead 1-8 to 1-7 with five minutes remaining. As the game reached a dramatic climax it was tense, it was edgy, it was very nerve-racking and the question on everyone’s lips, could we hold on? The answer was, unfortunately, no as Doohamlet put our defence under severe pressure and while we defended stoutly, in the last minute of ordinary time a Doohamlet player showed good composure to curl over a point to take the game to a replay. In fairness, a draw was probably a fair result as both teams were guilty of squandering several scoring opportunities through-out the course of the game and no doubt they will work on this before the replay which takes place tonight Thursday 19^th August and is fixed for St. Mary’s Park, Castleblayney and has a throw-in time of 7.45pm. Best of luck lads.

Full Match Report & Action Shots to Follow.