ACFL Division 1

St. Mary’s Ahoghill 0-10 All Saints Ballymena 2-12

All Saints turned in another polished performance when they travelled to Clooney on Sunday night and came away with an eight point victory over St. Mary’s Ahoghill.

The Ballymena side sat deep and broke with a blistering pace that their opponents couldn’t deal with and two goals from Sean McVeigh sent them on their way to a 2-7 to 0-3 half time lead.

Martin Graham came into the Ahoghill defence at Half time in an effort to contain the aerial threat of the towering McVeigh with some success and the home side hit the opening four points of the second half to close the gap to six but that would be as close as they got.

The visitors defence re-asserted their dominance after that and Ahoghill would add only three further points as the Slemish Park side kicked 0-5 of their own to win comfortably in the end

Ronan Graham pointed St. Mary’s ahead in the second minute but All Saints replied with 1-1 from Sean McVeigh to take a lead that they would not lose with McVeigh climbing above the pack to fist home in the 9^th minute

Matthew Downey and James O’Connell from a mark exchanged points before full-forward McVeigh got All Saints second goal which was a mirror image of the first in the 19^th minute.

The visitors were sitting deep and breaking at speed and after Ronan Graham converted a 23d minute free to bring the home side’s total to 0-3, the visitors finished strongly as Connell Lemon, Sean McVeigh and the strong running Patrick Ferris added unanswered points to leave them 2-7 to 0-3 ahead at the break.

It looked a long way back for the Ahoghill side as they changed ends for the second half but to their credit they started the new half well with Eamonn Brady, Thomas McGlone, Brady again and James O’Connell hitting the opening four points of the half to close the gap to six.

It was All Saints who would respond however, led by team captain, Shaun O’Callaghan who drove forward for their opening point in the 12^th minute with Ciaran Campbell and Patrick Ferris adding two more before James O’Connell replied from a free in the 23d minute.

The scores dried up after that with Michael McCarry from a free and James O’Connell from a similar effort at the other end concluding the scoring with the visitors quite content to run down the clock.

Another good victory for the Ballymena side that sees them climb to 7^th place in the table with 15 points and their pace and organisation continues to pose problems for their opponents.

Their opponent Ahoghill presently sit in 11^th place in the table with 9 points but with three rounds of games remaining should have enough in store to avoid the play-offs come the end of the season.

Ahoghill: 1 Cahir O’Kane 2 Seamus McKeever, 3 James Magee, 4 Diarmaid Graham, 5 Patrick Dougan, 6 Fionnbar O’Neill, 7 Bernard Graham, 8 Thomas McGlone, 9 Ronan Graham, 10 Eamonn Brady, 11 Neil O’Connell, 12 Dan O’Neill, 13 James O’Connell, 14 Conor Paul Crossey, 15 Donal Graham

Subs: Aiden Graham for Cahir O’Kane, Martin Graham, Colla McDonnell for Donal Graham, Harry O’Donnell for Bernard Graham

All Saints: 1 Connor Brennan, 2 Rian Tom, 3 Cal O’Brien, 4 James Gillan, 5 Patrick Ferris, 6 Shaun O’Callaghan, 7 Charlie Metrustry, 8 Michael Read, 9 Emmet Killough, 10 Connell Lemon, 11 Michael McCarry, 12 Joe Rafferty, 13 Ciaran Campbell, 14 Sean McVeigh, 15 Mattie Downey.

Subs: Eoin Walsh for Mattie Downey, Darrach Walsh for Eoin Campbell, Rory McVeigh for Sean McVeigh

Referee: Ray Matthews (Rossa)