Seneschalstown 1-06 Simonstown Gaels 2-11

Seneschalstown fell to a second defeat of this year’s Fairyhouse Steel Meath Senior Football Championship after going down to Simonstown Gaels by eight points in this Group C encounter in Walterstown on Friday evening. While the rain stayed away for the entirety of the 60 minutes, what had fallen earlier in the evening left the pitch in a wonderfully presented Walterstown, to go along with their superb scoreboard and complimentary match programme’s, slippy underfoot and made handling difficult particularly early on.

Seneschalstown made one change to their starting fifteen from the opening round, with Brian Maguire coming in at corner back for Neill Darby.

When Derek Ryan got proceedings underway it was the eventual winners who settled quickest with the opening two points inside three minutes from Shane McEnery and Padraig McKeever after a couple of early Seneschalstown attacks broke down.

Seneschalstown got themselves on the scoresheet in the fifth minute. Eoin Finnegan was fouled in the dressing room corner of the ground and Alan Mulvany curled over a tricky free from the 13 metre line.

After Seneschalstown worked hard to win the ball back from the kick-out, they were presented with another opportunity. The ball spilled loose and ended up in the hands of Mulvany and as he went to go around Robert Burlingham in the Simonstown goal, he was clipped from behind by a retreating defender. Referee Ryan had no issue in signalling for a penalty. Up stepped Dylan Keating and he dispatched the penalty expertly to the bottom left corner and Seneschalstown were ahead.

Unfortunately for Seneschalstown, their good world was undone two minutes later when Simonstown broke upfield and when Sean Tobin’s effort was cleared off the line by Séimí Byrne, the ball fell to the unmarked Aaron Farrelly who planted the ball into the roof of the net to put the Gaels ahead again.

Keating drew Seneschalstown level in the 13th minute from the right hand side after he jinked and weaved through a number of challenges before getting his shot off which had just enough juice in it to land over the bar.

A Padraig McKeever free put Simonstown’s noses in front after 18 minutes but Keating, who was enjoying an imperious first half for the Yellow Furze men split the posts with a superb effort off the outside of his left foot from 35 metres out.

The ebb and flow nature of the half continued and two points in quick succession had Seneschalstown chasing the game again in the run up to half time.  Seneschalstown’s answer came from the man with the Midas touch, Keating again arcing the ball between the sticks to bring his tally to 1-03 for the half.

Simonstown lead by two at the break after tagging on another score for themselves two minutes into first half stoppage time.

From a Seneschalstown point of view, the opening seconds of the second half turned out to be an absolute disaster. When Simonstown won the throw-in, the next Seneschalstown player to touch the ball would be James Meade to pick the ball out of his net less than 20 seconds after the resumption after Simonstown came up with a well worked goal finished to the net by McKeever.

It was a hammer blow for Seneschalstown and one which they never recovered from as Simonstown took control.

They clipped over four further points from McKeever (free), Farrelly (mark), Ben Hoey and Tadhg Hanrahan as Seneschalstown could not make any inroads into the Simonstown lead despite their best efforts.

Eoin Finnegan had a chance of a goal but the ball was cleared off the line and away to safety as Seneschalstown just couldn’t find the killer instinct in the third quarter.

Alan Mulvany, from a free eventually broke Seneschalstown’s second half duck in the 53rd minute and it was him again who came up with the next score as he clipped over his first from play as the game entered stoppage time.

Aaron Farrelly concluded the scoring for the evening as Simonstown move onto four points in the group, while Seneschalstown must dust themselves down for a meeting with Na Fianna in Ashbourne on Thursday week, September 5th.

Seneschalstown: James Meade, Brian Maguire, Simon Rooney, Séimí Byrne, Ronan Conneely, Danny Waters, Mark Fox, Donie Commons, Cathal Hickey, Dylan Keating (1-03, 1-00 pen), Joey Moore, Darren O’Brien, Robbie Finnegan, Eoin Finnegan, Alan Mulvany (0-03, 2fs)

Subs Used: Woodley Nicholson, Liam Dillon, Seán Carey, Ross Howard, James Conlon

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