Footballers go down to Derry

All Photos courtesy of Matt Browne Sportsfile

The senior football team had a disappointing outing in Wexford Park on Sunday, March 3rd when they hosted Derry in round 3 of the Allianz NFL Div 2.

Derry, very fit for early March, played a keep ball game with all 14 outfield players operating all around the pitch. This was highlighted in their opening score when corner back Gerard O’Kane scored a point after a  long phase of short handpassing by his team mates.

They raced into a three points to no score lead after ten minutes, then blasted wide when clear through on goal before a Graeme Molloy block prevented a major for the Oak Leaf county.

Wexford opened their account when Craig Doyle was fouled and Ben Brosnan pointed the resulting free. Wexford came into the game more then and were 4-3 behind after 23 minutes with a Shane Roche free adding to Adrian Flynn’s fine effort from play. Points were swapped by the sides, PJ Banville with Wexford’s 4th. A Derry free was put across the field and a pass inside left Emmet McGucin clear on goal,. His shot rattled the post with goalkeeper Tom Hughes well beaten, Joey Wadding doubled on the rebound to clear but Enda Lynn collected and scored a good point. Now 6-4 down Wexford rallied and as the clock ticked over the 35th minute they had levelled the scores at 6 points each. These two points were from Shane Roche who soloed through and punched over while directly from the kick-out  Ben Brosnan scored a great point.

However a lapse in concentration in injury time when we didn’t mark their runners from defence resulted in two quick points for Derry.

Half time score Derry 0-8 Wexford 0- 6.

The second half belonged to Derry. Wexford had scored a point through a Ben Brosnan free in the 4 th minute but didn’t score again until the game was almost out of reach. Rory Quinlivan, who had come on as a sub scored a good point to leave the home side trailing by 0-14 to 0-8 with 20 second half minutes gone.

Michael Furlong, another sub, almost had a spectacular introduction when he raced through the defence and his shot went narrowly wide. He was very lively and added some impetus to the team. We now got a bit more into the game with direct running at their defence and on 24 minutes luck eluded us when, through on goal, the first shot was well saved by the goalkeeper and the rebound was met first time by Joey Wadding but his voley rebounded off the crossbar and cleared. To add insult to injury Derry went down the field, earned a free and scored to make the score-line 15-8. A 4 point turnaround and with it Wexfords’ last hope of staging a recovery. 1-8 to 0-14 with eleven minutes left would have made for a great finish and hopefully from a Wexford view point a comeback similar to Armagh’s the previous week. Sadly it was not to be

From there to the end Derry took control and while we added 2 more points from Shane Roche and Adrian Flynn Derry added 4 more points to leave the final score :

Wexford 0-10 Derry 0-19

Wexford: T Hughes; J Wadding, G Molloy, R Tierney; B Malone, L Chin, A Doyle; D Waters, C Doyle; S Roche (0-03, 0-02f), B. Brosnan (0-03, 0-02f), P Byrne; A Flynn (0-02), R. Barry (capt), PJ Banville (0-01).

Substitutes: R Quinlivan (0-01) for C Doyle, D Murphy for Chin, J Holmes for A Doyle, K Gore for Brosnan, M Furlong for Tierney.

Derry: T Mallon; G O’Kane (0-01), D McBride, C McKaigue; C Kielt (0-02), M Lynch (capt) (0-01), SL McGoldrick (0-01); Pasty Bradley (0-01), PJ McCloskey (0-01); B McGoldrick, E Lynn (0-04), J Kielt (0-02, 0-01f); B Heron, E McGuckin (0-05, 0-02f), L Kennedy.

Substitutes: R Wilkinson (0-01) for Kennedy, D Heavron for J Kielt, C McFaul for Heron, R Bell for McCloskey, C McWilliams for Lynch.

Referee: Michael Collins (Cork)

Next up is Louth away next Sunday March at 2 30 PM

Like Wexford Louth have a win a loss and a draw so far