The Youth
team had a convincing win at home to AC Athletic last weekend.The pitch was soft in the middle after the weather and both teams had trouble in coming to terms with it. We hadn’t had a game in 3 or 4 weeks and it showed particularly in the first half. Despite having more of the ball we were slow to release it and tried to play through the middle even though when Dara O’Connor and Oisin O’ Brien on the wings got the ball we were at our most dangerous. Thomas Lenihan, Luke Moynihan and Bobby O’Regan had a lot of the ball in midfield and were combining well, Sean Higgins up front was very busy and was threatening every time he got the ball. Eventually after 35 minutes Bobby scored a penalty after Oisin had been fouled in the box. AC were dangerous when they attacked and our midfield did not cover themselves in glory defensively in this half. The back 5 of Brian O’Regan, Sean Donnellan, Antoin Stanton, Ossie Clifford and Darren Chester operated well as a group which was just as well as they were outnumbered on a number of occasions. In the 2nd half our lads got their act together a bit more with better, quicker passing and it yielded many chances. We raced into a 4-0 nil lead with goals from Oisin, Luke and substitute Conor Lowe. We dropped our levels at this point and AC got 2 well taken goals bit just as it looked it was game on but we responded with Luke, Conor and Bobby scoring 3 in quick succession. We dominated for the last period of the game but failed to add to our tally thanks to good defensive play by AC who played right to the end. Final Score Samphires 7 AC Ath 2.