Match Reports >> 2008 Match Reports >> Fahy Rovers 0-3 Crossmolina

June 22nd 2008 Fahy Rovers 0-3 Crossmolina 

Crossmolina arrested their slide towards Divison One with probably their best performance since 2006 when they acquitted themselves so well in their debut Super League campaign. The hosts had requested that the kickoff time be moved forward to allow their players to attend the Mayo match down the road at McHale Park in the afternoon and an unusually subdued Rovers display suggested that their minds were elsewhere. They chose a bad time to lower their intensity because Crossmolina fielded a desperate team staring relegation in the face and it showed in their tigerish tackling. From the start Fahy were second best and their stray passes were hurried by the Deelsiders doggedness. The first real chance of the game resulted from a free kick that Stewart Griffin thumped onto the post from twenty yards out. Rovers replied with a good attack at the other end but goalie Johnny Burke made a good save to keep his team on par. After a quarter of an hour the visitors pinched the goal their outing deserved when Griffin sprayed a ball from midfield to Derek Greham on the right flank. The striker instinctively headed for goal and drilled a low shot past the goalie that was tucked just inside the far post. Despite having failed to register a goal in five of their previous six league outings Crossmolina nearly doubled their lead soon after when when John Duggan caused a Rover defender to crash into his goalkeeper as they both attempted to clear the ball. After a bout of head tennis and various swipes by both sides the ball was eventually scrambled clear to the edge of the penalty area where Duggan nearly capitalised on the chaos he caused by hooking a volley onto the crossbar. As the half expired the visitors were clearly in the ascendancy as the Rovers were repeatedly penalised for fouls that highlighted their lack of sharpness.

Crossmolina improved in the second half to such an extent that the game became quite one-sided. Griffin and Paul McGuinness busily patrolled midfield and the defence was solid enough to record only the teams’ second clean sheet of the season. In contrast the Fahy defence were unable to deal with the aerial threat of Greham and during the second half they were frequently caught out by Burke’s long kick outs. It was by this method that the second goal was created with Burke punting the ball skywards before Greham connected to it with his head on its return from orbit. Duggan hared onto the flick and wrong-footed the goalie with a clever stepover before slotting home. Twice after that Duggan attempted to return the favour to his strike partner. Firstly, he collected the ball in midfield and turned to dink a pass behind the Fahy backline but Greham tamely struck the ball at the Rovers netminder from twelve yards out. The next time Duggan benefited from one of Burke’s up-and-unders that eluded the Rovers defence and he unselfishly squared the ball for Greham from the left side of the area but a sliding challenge by a home defender smothered his shot. With ten minutes remaining Burke skied the ball the length of the field again and it bounced behind the defence where Greham patiently waited for it to sit up before he smashed it past the exposed custodian. Pierce Loftus could have added an extra sheen to the win two minutes before the end but his twenty five yard free kick was fractionally wide of the left post. However, it was an extremely satisfactory day’s work for the visitors and they will be hoping to shaken off the form that has bogged them down for the past season and a half. Rovers, on the other hand, will shrug this off as a bad day at the office and try to get their promotion push back on track.

Crossmolina – Johnny Burke, Jason Canavan, Pierce Loftus, Michael Cafferty, Anthony Timoney, Darragh Carroll, Stewart Grifin, Paul McGuinness, Mark Howley (Adam Gordon 82), John Duggan, Derek Greham (Kenny Canavan 86)

Referee – Aiden Nevin

Match Reports >> 2008 Match Reports >> Fahy Rovers 0-3 Crossmolina