Moyle Park 0 – MM 1
Mount Merrion followed up there demolition of Skerries town last week with a very good victory against Moyle Park in atrocious conditions. Moyle Park played with the “Gale” at their backs for the first half and used the conditions to their advantage by lumping the ball forward at every opportunity to their excellent number 9. Heb caused the MM defence a lot of problems with his excellent first touch and pace.
Moyle Park could consider themselves unlucky not to go in at the break 1 up with one terrific effort off the bar and one goal disallowed for a very soft freekick given to MM inside the six yard box. But credit must go to an excellent defensive display by all the players especially the two centre half’s who battled manfully against atrocious condition for the first 45mins.
Predictably the second half was the opposite to the first half with Merrion camped inside the Moyle park half. At times Merrion tried to play to much football in those conditions with the final ball just not reaching its target. Austin Skelly came on in the second half and immediately started to cause a lot of problems with his robust tackling and ability to hold off defenders and play others in.
Still very few chances were created with Skelly unlucky with one drive and with a lob that looked certain to go in but the wind lifted it over the bar at the last second. Johnny King and Chris Barber also went close with efforts. Finally with three mins to go the game was decided by one moment of quality with great work down the right by Mark Cullen squaring the ball for Mikey McCann to bury it from eight yards with his first touch since coming on.
Credit must go to the management going for the win by taking off a CH and putting McCann on to take all the points for Merrion. In a day of little football but a lot of hard graft, Merrion just shaded it for better use of poession. Moyle Park are a very big and direct side and will take points off everyone. Their league position is not reflective of the quality they have especially upfront and you could see them moving up the table after Christmas.
Man of the Match award must go to one of the defenders as they set the platform for this victory. Man of the Match goes to our new recruit Stephen Murtagh who is proving himself to be vital component of this side.
