ACFL Division 1
St. Enda’s 3-10 Ahoghill
Pics JJ Lawell
St. Mary’s Ahoghill looked to be heading for their third brace of points when they led St. Enda’s 1-3 to 0-4 at half time at Hightown and were good value for their lead but the home side came back strongly in the second half and two opportunist goals from Fionn Nagle swung it in their favour.
PJ O’Connell led the Ahoghill charge in the opening half and the corner-forward proved a handful for the St. Enda’s defence hitting 1-2 of their first half total with the other point coming from James O’Connell.
PJ O’Connell’s goal arrived in the 22nd minute to give his side the lead after Fiontan O’Connor, Fionn Nagle and Cormac Morgan had opened the scoring with points for the Glengormley men with a Cormac Scott point in first half injury time keeping the home side within touching distance.
O’Connor clipped over an early point to close the gap to the minimum on the restart but a couple from Ronan Graham and Boris O’Connell for the visitors in response to points from Fionn Nagle and Conan Lyttle left it finally balanced with ten minutes of the second half gone.
Niall Heatley for St. Enda’s and Ronan Graham and Dan O’Neill for Ahoghill exchanged further minors before Donal Walsh scored St. Enda’s opening goal in the 17th minute to edge the Glengormley side in front.
A couple of excellent points from Ronan Graham closed the deficit to three but St. Enda’s began to use the first time ball into their forward line to good effect and it started to pay dividends with Fionn Nagle taking advantage of poor defending by the visitors to add goals in the 25th and 27th minutes and turn the game on its head.
Prior to this Ahoghill had missed several simple chances to go 4 points ahead to go and missed a couple of chances after Nagle got through for the St. Enda’s goals and will feel that they could have had something from this game.
St. Enda’s: 1 Paddy Flood, 2 Fiontan Eastwood, 3 Michael McNamee, 4 Niall Heatley, 5 Conan Lyttle, 6 Conor Maxwell, 7 Ronan O’Neill, 8 Fiontan O’Connor, 9 Donal Walsh, 10 Cormac Morgan, 11 Cormac Scott, 12 Ciaran McKeown, 13 Fionn Nagle, 14, Gerard Crossey, 15 Sean McBride.
Ahoghill: 1 Noel Crossey, 2 Bernard Graham, 3 James Magee, 4 Patrick Dougan, 5 Diarmaid Graham, 6 Fionnbar O’Neill, 7 Eamonn Brady, 8 Neil O’Connell, 9 Patrick Graham, 10 James O’Connell, 11 Dan O’Neill, 12 Owen Neeson, 13 Conor Crossey, 14 Ronan Graham, 15 PJ O’Connell
