ACL Div. 5: Mullingar Shamrocks 3-23 Multyfarnham 1-10.
A beautiful morning for football with an early start to allow people attend the open training session in TEG Cusack Park. And a good game of football to start the day with Mullingar Shamrocks clocking 3-23 for an impressive win. The final scoreline maybe doesn’t reflect the Multy efforts. Shamrocks, playing against the wind, held an interval lead of 1-10 to 0-8. A pair of beautifully stroked 2-pointer frees by Ross Corroon, a string of points from Alex Sheerin (0-5) and a great goal created by Ross and Alex and finished by Tommy Daly were the first half highlights from the Shamrocks perspective.
Ian McGovern, a second half substitute, brought an extra threat to the Multyfarnham attack but points from Ronan Byrne and Gavin Pierce extended the lead. Matthew Shaw had an immediate impact as a substitute and scored 1-2 out of the 1-3 that Shamrocks added to the scoreboard over 10 minutes. The goal owed much to the creative efforts of Tommy Daly. The extra point was scored by Alex Sheerin and it’s great to see Alex back. His pace and predatory instincts are valuable qualities. Another who made a welcome return was Amin Hacini. Ben McNamee, in the manner of the modern fullback line player, added another point to his first half effort. Ben wasn’t finished and landed a superb two-pointer from out near the club house – two for the price of one and the score of the day. (The first corner back to score a two pointer for Shamrocks?). Gavin Pierce repeated the two-pointer effort.
Adam Buckley pointed a 45 in his cameo appearance; Darragh Hughes had the ball in the net shortly after entering the field of play – Kevin Kiernan’s fetch and superb delivery created the opportunity for Darragh (Did you know that Darragh’s granddad Billy Moran, one of Westmeath’s all-time greats, was featured in last Sunday’s Leinster Final programme in the Heroes of the Past feature?). Eoin Doran finished with a superb reflex save as Neil Hannigan and Gavin Pierce finished the day with points.
Mullingar Shamrocks: Eoin Doran; Eamon Breslin (Peter Finch), Mathew Siode, Ben McNamee (0-4); Ronan Byrne, Pearse Corroon, Jack Toal (Matthew Shaw, 1-2); Ciaran Kiernan, Nathan Gavin (Adam Buckley, 0-1); Neil Hannigan (0-2), Padraig Casey (0-1) (Amin Hacini), Ross Corroon (0-4) [Darragh Hughes, 1-0]; Tommy Daly (1-0), Alex Sheerin (0-5) [Conor Heffernan], Gavin Pierce (0-4).
