‘Castle beat Fintona to maintain 100 per cent winning start

FINTONA 0-9 GRENCASTLE 0-12

GREENCASTLE are clearly a team keen on a mission to make their stay in Division Two a brief one.

Relegated last season the St Patrick’s sit joint top of the table on maximum points after three rounds of fixtures, but they were made to dig deep to chisel out this triumph at St Lawrence’s Park on Friday evening.

It took four points on the bounce down the home straight for the ‘Castle boys to eventually shake off the stubborn resistance of the Pearses, who had fought back to level proceedings at eight points apiece heading into the closing ten minutes.

Impressive down the spine of their team where Miceal McCann, Sean Connelly, Sean Warnock and Cahir McCullagh imposed themselves on proceedings, the St Patrick’s never trailed

at any juncture, and even when Fintona threatened to shock them, they had the composure and quality to up the gears again.

Some of the lynchpins of last year’s memorable campaign- Jared Brogan Caolan Donnelly and Conor McGoldrick- helped to spearhead the Pearses revival, when they reeled in a four point second half deficit, and while they came up short in the end, there was no doubting their character or fighting spirit.

The hosts monopolised possession for long spells in the first half, but a series of costly turnovers and wasteful passes, left them playing catch-up.

Cahir McCullagh (‘mark’) and Mark Carson struck over the first two scores for the away side, who counter-attacked throughout with real pace and purpose.

Brogan cleverly made space in a congested Greencastle defence to turn and tuck over Fintona’s opener in the ninth minute, but in the main they struggled to make much headway.

A brace of McCullagh pointed frees sandwiched an Aidan Donnelly dead ball conversion at the other end as Greencastle enjoyed a double scores advantage- 0-4 to 0-2- by the 20^th minute.

The visitors looked to be building up a head of steam, with McCann and Conneely coming to the fore. And in Sean Warnock they have a man capable of picking his spot from distance, as he did twice with super scores on the burst to stretch their lead out further.

When McCullagh cut in onto McCann’s delivery to fist over it left five between the sides but two quick scores just before the break from Aidan Donnelly (one free) reduced the arrears to 0-7 to 0-4 at half-time.

A razor sharp exchange of passes between Sean Warnock and McCullagh, enabled Joe Warnock to fire over for Greencastle when action resumed, though during this spell they also wasted other scoring opportunities to put the issue beyond doubt.

As last year demonstrated, Fintona aren’t a team to throw in the towel, and they came storming back into the match.

Oran Hughes set the ball rolling when he floated over an excellent point, before the hard-working Brogan rifled a score to leave two in it.

With their confidence surging the Pearses drove forward and were rewarded with a further Aidan Donnelly free and then the equaliser from Caolam Donnelly, who darted inside to drill over.

Greencastle though battened down the hatches and were boosted by another wonderful point hoisted over by Sean Warnock to put them ahead again.

Barry McGarvey and Mark Carson provided them with further breathing space with pointed frees, and when Connelly earned due reward for his sterling efforts with a score, there was four in it. Cathal Starrs replied at the other end but time was to run out on the Pearses.