Linehan Inspires United Win U13's

UNDER 13 PREMIERLINEHAN INSPIRES UNITED WIN Midleton 1: Blarney United 2We travelled this week to Knockgriffin Park to play Midleton.The first ten minutes were even enough with Scott Forrest and Liam O Connor linking up well splitting the Midleton defence on a few occasions.The breakthrough came for us in the 13th minute when the ball was played out of defence to Kelvin O Donoghue in midfield who gave a peach of a ball to Jack O Keffe who had made a great run from the right wing into the box to unleash a great shot past the Midleton keeper.The rest of the half was one way traffic as Blarney pushed on for number 2 and were denied a penalty when Scott Forrest skipped past 2 players and was taken down inside box but referee did not give penalty decision.Midleton came out for the second half determined to get back into the game and were dominating possession and restricting Blarney to a few scraps on the break.

The equaliser came 14 minutes into the second half when a corner was only half cleared and fell to a Midleton player who shot at goal and had his effort saved by Blarney keeper Eli Linehan but rebound fell to Midleton player to tap in. Midleton were now hungry for the winner and kept pushing forward and were it not for Eli Linehan the Blarney keeper making 2 point blank saves which were applauded by everybody that was watching the game we would have went behind.These saves seemed to inspire our lads and in fairness to them they dug deep to get back into game. The introduction of Shay Dineen and Josh Roberts brought more energy to the Blarney attack as we pushed forward for the winner with time running out.With 2 minutes remaining Kelvin picked up the ball in midfield and again gave a lovely pass this time to Liam O Connor on the left wing who ran at the Midleton defence and pile drived an unstoppable shot into the roof of the Midleton goal. We managed to survive the 6 ½ added minutes the referee played at end of normal time.There were good performances from Liam O Connor, Scott Forrest & Kelvin O Donoghue but man of match was the Blarney Keeper Eli Linehan who inspired team on with some magnificent saves.It wasn’t our best performance but fair play to the lads they dug deep and got the win to setup a top of table clash with Corinthians in 2 weeks time.Well done lads!!!!!

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