ACFL Division 1
Tir Na nOg 1 – 15 Casements 4 – 13
With their preseason 5th place league target attained and over a dozen players off to Gooch Kellys stag weekend in Albufeira, Casements scrambled a match day panel together to fulfil this penultimate league fixture and expected the worst, facing off against a Randalstown team who would greatly benefit from the availability of league points as they stare into the bottom of a division one league relegation battle.
If anything Casements were in carefree mode, with John McKeever and some of his management team off to the national feile in Wexford. This was a great opportunity for the Whitehill men, but when Seamus Shannon let the ball loose from the throw in it took less than fifteen minutes for the visitors to steal a march that would not be recovered. During that time Casements played some excellent free flowing football, Niall Delargy had the ball in the net twice and could have had his hat trick later had the ball not rebounded off both posts before remaining in play!
On the quarter mark Michael Hagan produced the third green flag of the evening, as Randalstown took longer than expected to settle into the contest, though an excellently struck two pointer from distance from the accurate feet of Aaron McNeilly and two individual points from Barry McCormick kept the blues in some kind of relative touch.
In between times, several vital and timely interceptions by excellent full back Shane Delargy, a point blank save from stand in keeper Daniel McNicholl, and two terrific turnovers from returnee Conor McGhee, which he ran the pitch and dispatched between the posts was enough to keep Casements ticking along nicely in the lead, either side of timely water breaks from the hot evening sun.
When the teams turned around at half time there was ten points between the sides, a gap which was more or less maintained right up until the very last play of the game when busy Aaron McNeilly eventually found a way to squeeze the ball past McNicholl and into Casements nets, just in time before Seamus Shannon brought proceedings to a close.
In between times Darragh Fagan notched a couple of good scores for the hosts, but Fergal OKane, Conor McGhee, Dermot McAleese and Niall Delargy were well in control around the middle third, using their power and pace as a platform to supply hard running Ryan Convery and the potent scoring threats upfront of Oisin Doherty and Michael Hagan who were superb all evening, ably assisted by Ciaran McKenna and Sean Byrne who also managed to grab a goal at the end of the second quarter.
Randalstown now meet league toppers Cargin in their final game and on this display it is hard to see a shock result that would offer Randalstown any current comfort. Meanwhile Portglenone will take a bit of a break before their own final league commitment of the season against Lamh Dhearg, and get down to the business of championship preparation.
