Mullingar town derby will be the headline act of sfc semifinals
Mullingar Shamrocks combined slick strategy with old-fashioned strength of character at Cusack Park last night, ousting Tyrrellspass to set up a Shay Murtagh SFC semi-final with town rivals St Loman's.
Last weekend's drawn quarter-final ended with unruly scenes after Tyrrellspass equalised with a controversial late free, but last night's offering thrilled for very different reasons.
Shamrocks looked dead and buried at the short whistle, trailing 1-9 to 0-4 after conceding a penalty (duly converted by Tyrrellspass's Ger Egan), and losing Conor Twomey to a black card. Denis Glennon also had a decent first half for Sky Blues, kicking three fine points.
However, the introduction of lofty midfielder Daragh Daly at full forward made all the difference after the break, and using him as a target man, the long ball into the parallelogram started to work wonders for Shamrocks.
A powerful strike from Lorcan Smyth (35) was followed by a tremendous goal from Donal O'Donoghue - an almost nonchalant finish after he rose majestically to capture a long ball from Paddy Joyce, at the expense of two defenders.
The threat which Daly posed at the edge of the square - and Tyrrellspass's failure to deal with it - came home to roost for the Tidy Town on 53 minutes, when outjumped Darren Quinn to nudge a high ball over the line.
A late fisted effort from Tyrrellspass's Martin Flanagan went just wide, as Shamrocks held on to book a tantalising semi-final meeting with St Loman's.
After the final whistle, Shamrocks manager Bernard Flynn praised both his young players and their more experienced colleagues for bouncing back after a lacklustre first half.
"I thought their attitude in the first half was very poor," Flynn said afterwards. "But I thought that if we got the first couple of scores in the second half, we'd be in with a chance."
Scorers
Mullingar Shamrocks: L Smyth 1-1, D O’Donoghue and D Daly 1-0 each, D McDermott, D Corroon (frees) and C Curley 0-2 each, E Moore, P Joyce, E O’Neill and S Quinn 0-1 each. Tyrrellspass: G Egan 1-5 (1-0 pen, 0-3f), Denis Glennon 0-3, J Gonoud, S Arthur, David Glennon, D McNicholas, B Gavin and C Daly 0-1 each.
Mullingar Shamrocks
Philip Shaw; Eddie Moore, Efe Siode, Calvin Kirwan; Killian Daly, Eoin O’Neill, Paddy Joyce; Donal O’Donoghue, Denis Corroon; Sean Daly, Lorcan Smyth, Conor Twomey; Dean Moore, Dylan McDermott, Ciaran Curley. Subs used: Conor Moore for D Moore (18), Aaron Purcell (y/c, 27) for Twomey (b/c, 24), Daragh Daly for S Daly (h-t), Simon Quinn for C Moore (43), John Ganley for McDermott (49), Anthony Clinton for O’Donoghue (60).
Tyrrellspass
Darren Quinn; Ray Sheridan, Jamie Gonoud, Eoghan O’Neill; David Jessop, Brian Slevin, Philip Sheridan; Dean McNicholas, Ger Egan; David Gaye, David Glennon, Gavin Hoey; Conor Slevin, Martin Flanagan, Denis Glennon. Subs used: Shane Arthur for B Slevin (inj., 14), Ben Gavin for Hoey (b/c, 42), Ciaran Daly for Jessop (47), Valentinas Sizychas for Gaye (51).
Ref
Pat Fox (Rosemount).