Feis Cup - Quarter Final. Simonstown Gaels 1-12 Skryne 0-14

Simonstown Gaels 1-12 Skryne 0-14

Feis Cup – Quarter Final

Skryne lost out by the narrowest of margins to Simonstown in this Feis Cup Quarter Final. The match was played in ideal conditions on Wednesday night in Simonstown.

The teams were very evenly matched in the first half with defences mainly on top although both sides gave away needless free kicks. Those errors were ruthlessly punished by the chief marksmen – Patrick O’Rourke for Skryne and Sean Tobin for Simonstown. The highlight of the first half was the battle between Tobin and Skryne’s centre back Stephen O’Brien. Honours even here with O’Brien even managing to venture upfield to score an excellent point in that tight first half. As a result of those ‘tight’ exchanges in this period the teams went in level at half time – 0-6 each.

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The second half continued in the same vein with both sets of defenders blotting out their opposite numbers and the free taking of the Tobin and O’Rourke cancelling each other out. Two incidents in this half had a big bearing on the result. Firstly Skryne lost Robbie Clarke, who was having a fine game, to a second yellow card, then Niall Kane got on the end of a cross from the right wing to bang the ball to the Skryne net for the only goal of the match. This goal gave the Town side the lead and Skryne could not get enough scores to cancel it out. Ian Davis almost got that all important goal with the last play of the game when he got on the end of a high centre from Patrick O’Rourke only to see his fisted effort graze the top of the crossbar. The referee blew full time on the kickout and the Blues were out.

Apart from O’Rourke and O’Brien Skryne had very good performance’s from Ian Gillette in goal, Darren Fox in defence, Harry Rooney at midfield while upfront Mark Battersby and Jason Reddy both fought hard especially in the first half when they had to feed off scraps.

Skryne – Ian Gillette. Robbie Clarke, Niall Lenehan, David Carroll. Paddy Carpenter, Stephen O’Brien (0-1), Darren Fox. David McGoldrick, Harry Rooney (0-1). Ciaran Lenehan, Ian Davis (0-1), Colm Doherty. Jason Reddy (0-2), Patrick O’Rourke (0-8), Mark Battersby.

Subs used – Conor O’Brien (0-1), Paddy Fox and Jason Fox.