This game was played on a completely sodden and boggy pitch with surface water lying in patches which resulted in it never being a classic….but it was one of those games that guts and determination was needed to claim the victory. Ahoghill played the match with more or less a senior team (give or take a few players) to give them a challenge before their Intermediate Championship match next week so it was going to be a tough match from the outset.
The visitors started the brighter of the two teams and they went two points up before Creggan got on the score sheet, drawing level with points from Ryan Mullan and Eunan McAteer. After a period of play of slips and stray passes from both sides, Ahoghill managed to string a few consecutive passes together which resulted in them finding the net to restore their lead again.
Creggan battled on and they plugged away at the deficit which eventually saw them claw it back from the boots of Leigh Martin, Joey Robb and Danny Maguire, who all raised the white flags (if there had been any umpires with white flags that is).
Ahoghill regrouped however and claimed the last two points of the half to go in 0-05 to 0-07 ahead.
After the restart Creggan made great inroads to overturning the gap when Dermot Robb popped over a nice point and then Joey Robb planted to the net from a lung bursting run from midfield. Joey was making those breaks from midfield on numerous occasions and should have been found more times than he was…right Joey?! I’m sure Mark Anthony will say the same too…..
Anyway, the Creggan lead didn’t last too long as Ahoghill came right back and responded with a goal and 2 points of their own to take control of the scoreboard once again. In the next period of the game though, Creggan outscored their opponents by 2-03 to 0-02 to wrestle control back once more. That man D. Robb claiming himself a goal with J. Robb getting another point for himself. The rest of the scoring was done by newlywed M.A. McNicholl who claimed a great 1-02.
Ahoghill continued to make a match of it though as you would expect by firing to the net again which was complemented with another point, but Leigh Martin provided the closing act on the match by popping over two points for Creggan to run out winners by that margin.
This was a good test for the Reserve team against a big strong Div. 3 side in which they more than matched all over the pitch. The result leaves Creggan still sitting at the summit of the Div. 5 table with maximum points after 7 games played.
Kickhams Team: Peter Graham, Michael Dougan (Aidan Maguire), Sean McLarnon, Declan Smyth, Cathal Shannon, Danny Maguire (0-01), Dominic Totten, Olly Duffin, Joey Robb 1-02), Dermot Robb (1-01), Ryan Mullan (0-01), Michael McCann, Benny Devlin (M.A. McNicholl (1-02)), Leigh Martin (0-03), Eunan McAteer (0-01) (Michael Maguire).