Inchicore spot on against Collinstown

INCHICORE Athletic FC secured their place in the last eight of the Lummy O’Reilly Cup with a dramatic penalty shoot-out win against Collinstown FC on Sunday in Collinstown, reports Stephen Farrell.

Inchicore’s goalkeeper Brian Cronin was the hero of the day, making two crucial saves in the penalty shoot-out, which ended up 4 goals to three in Inchicore’s favour.

Indeed, there was plenty of drama in ordinary time with Inchicore only equalising in the last minute of injury time when Craig Walsh diverted a goal bound shot with his heel into the corner of the Collinstown net.

In an enthralling contest Collinstown took the lead mid-way through the first half.

“I felt that was against the run of play,” said Tony Griffiths, manager of Inchicore, who also felt that his team responded well to this set-back.

“We took the game by the scruff of the kneck, we took the game to them,” he added.

Inchicore Athletic’s keeper was the hero of the day after he saved two penalties to send Inchicore through to the next round of the cup

Playing conditions were difficult on the day.

“The pitch dug up after about 20 minutes, it wasn’t really possible to get the ball down, so it turned into a battle really,” said Tony.

Inchicore certainly didn’t make things easy for themselves, missing a penalty on thirty-five minutes.

“That was a big moment,” said Tony Griffiths, manager of Inchicore.

“But we kept going,” he added.

Significantly, Collinstown were then reduced to 10 men after 55 minutes.

Tony felt that in the second-half Collinstown leading one-nil became more conservative trying to catch Inchicore on the break while Inchicore were pushing for an equaliser.

Indeed Inchicore missed a number of opportunities in normal time through Craig Walsh, Shane Hyland before the aforementioned Walsh came to Inchicore’s rescue.

In extra-time Tony felt Inchicore had the better of the exchanges.

“We had four very good chances, Craig Walsh pulled the ball across for Mark Stanford (who came on for Jamie Doran) who unfortunately put it over the bar,” said Tony.

“And you start to think ‘will it be our day?’,” he confessed.

However, thanks to the aforementioned Cronin and Ryan Lennon, Jamie Henderson, Shane Hyland and Craig Walsh who scored in the shoot-out, Inchicore progress to a home quarter final against Dublin Bus with no date fixed as of yet.

Collinstown Manager, Eric Quinn also felt that the game was an enthralling spectacle.

“It was a really good game between two experienced sides, you had first v second in the league (Senior Sunday 1A).

“Hopefully there will be a good second half to the season when we go toe-to-toe in the league,” he said.

INCHICORE: Brian Cronin, Joseph Fitzmaurice, Yannis Bulmer, Jamie Doran, Regan Lennon, Thomas Hyland (Capt.), Luke Rossiter, James O’Brien, Shane Hyland, Sean Quinn, Craig Walsh.

COLLINSTOWN: Greg Murray, Ian McNeil, Dean Carpenter, Dean Meehan, Shawn Magee, Stephen Grogan, Sonny Conway, Dylan Clarke, Shane Stritch, Paul McMahon, and Nathan Brown.