28th February 2009

 

Last Saturday Kircubbin made the long journey to Ballyclare to play third placed Grange FC in the league. After a comfortable away victory last time out, the Kircubbin team were looking to build on that performance. But Grange had already beaten Kircubbin at home this season and all the predictions on the NIfootball.com website were for a resounding Grange victory.

With ten minutes gone in the match it was apparent to the Kircubbin management that the Grange team were not as dominate as expected. Kircubbin's front two, Matthew Torney and Fintan Bell caused the back four problems right from the start. Jonnie and Ross were dominant in the centre of midfield, ably assisted by Brendan Masterson and Adam Arthurs on the wings. Fergal Bell was playing only his second game back after injury was always comfortable at the back, along with Cahal McGrattan, Sean Masterson and Paddy O'Prey. Eugene "Chippy" McGrattan was in fine form in goals, making up for his few errors in earlier games.

Kircubbin opened the scoring with a well worked goal from a corner. Adam delivered a perfect low cross to Brendan, who managed to steer the ball past a defender high into the roof of the net. Grange's best chance of the half came from a lucky deflection, but the shot was well off target. The home team pushed forward for an equalizer, but were mainly restricted to punting high balls into the box. These were easily dealt with by Chippy who was in total control of the 18 yard box for the entire game. Shortly before half time Kircubbin doubled their lead when Fintan crossed a ball into the six yard box for Matthew, a defender got his head to the ball first but could only deflect the ball into his own net. 0-2 at the break.

Grange are not in third place in the league without reason, and Stephen Clarke knew that the first 15 minutes of the second half were going to be vital in deciding the outcome of the game. Grange however didn't cause any greater threat in the opening period of the second half and it looked like Kircubbin were on track for a second victory in two weeks. Sean Clancy came on in place of Adam for the final half hour, and John Caughey replaced Fintan for the last twenty minutes. Time was now running out for Grange, and they pushed men forward in search of a goal. Chippy did make one save at his near post, but apart from that Grange didn't threaten the Kircubbin goal. With only a few minutes to play on the clock, Jonnie Clarke got a bad neck injury, giving his brother Stephen a rare opportunity to play the remainder of the game. With only a few seconds of injury time left Paddy O'Prey played a through ball to Stephen on the half way line. He managed to get clear of the last Grange defender and deftly lob the approaching keeper from 25 yards to seal an emphatic victory. Final score 0-3.

This week the team have been drawn for no game. Next match is at home to Santos on Saturday 14th March.