A Game of 2 Halves

Last Saturday proved to a frustrating one for the Under 15 team at home to Ballyhar. This fixture has always served up goals and this one was no different. Our first half performance was our best in a long time yet somehow we finished the half on level terms only. We started really well and within 3 minutes we were one up through Cian MacGarry who arrowed his way through the opposition defence and supplied a neat finish after being slotted through by Ryan Dolan. Within 5 minutes we were through again but poor decision making at the critical time by our front men led to a bad miss when a goal was inevitable. Still we dominated and had some fabulous passages of interplay in this half, especially when David Murphy combined with Thomas Lenihan to set up attack after attack and nothing but a victory looked on the cards. It was noticeable though that as the half wore on Ballyhar started to up the ante and we struggled with our some of our tackling especially in the midfield areas and our defence had to stand tall to repel the opposition, with Jamie Hogan in particular to the fore with his covering. Then just on half time we conceded a free 10 yards inside our half  and unbelievably we failed to deal with it and it ended up in our net. The second half was not a good half for us and we struggled to cope with Ballyhar’s movement up and down the pitch. This led to them scoring 2 goals with 20 minutes to go and as usual after this we upped our game but too little too late. Both teams scored in the last 5 minutes to leave the score 4-2 to Ballyhar.