Mullingar Town produce finest performance of the season
Mullingar Town travelled to Abbeyleix Athletic on Sunday afternoon to play one of their games in hand in the Senior Division without six first team squad members, missing through injuries and illness, and produced their best performance of the season against a very physical Abbeyleix team.
Town started the brightest and settled straight into dominating possession, moving the ball quickly in one and two touches and were pulling Abbeyleix all over the place with their movement off the ball in the first half. Mullingar created some big chances before a brilliant team move saw the ball get to Davie Mimnagh inside the box and when Mims cut inside to shoot, the Abbeyleix centre half pulled him down for a penalty to Town.
Captain Bubba Charles stepped up but dragged his penalty wide of the Abbeyleix goal. Mullingar Town's heads didn’t drop and for the rest of the half they created chance after chance with some brilliant attacking football. Paul Reid was unlucky twice as the Abbeyleix ‘keeper produced two brilliant saves to keep the game scoreless.
The breakthrough eventually came when Sam Watkin and Davie Dyer combined to find Shane O’Keeffe in space down the right and he produced a fantastic cross for Nathan McCullagh to put Town 1-0 up. It was Liam Brennan who broke through the lines shortly after and a brilliant pull back to the edge of the box found Davie Dyer who finished brilliantly first time to make it 2-0. Town should have added more goals that their play deserved, but Abbeyleix held firm to get to half-time only 2-0 down. Town knew that Abbeyleix would throw everything at them in the second half and in fairness Abbeyleix came out on the front foot when play resumed. However, it was Town who got the third goal of the game when Davie Dyer pressed the Abbeyleix defence and Shane O’Keeffe scored with the outside of his right foot from the edge of the box to make it 3-0.
Abbeyleix replied from a long-range effort with about 20 minutes to go to make it 3-1. Mullingar Town responded the right way and brought calmness and quality to their play. Both Bubba Charles and Liam Brennan broke out from the back and combined with some brilliant play and Liam Brennan was pulled down in the box for Town’s second penalty of the game.
Shane O’Keeffe stepped up and put the ‘keeper the wrong way to make it 4-1 to a dominant Mullingar Town side. The red and black kept breaking forward at this stage. Mims and Daragh Kiernan combined down the left and found Shane O’Keeffe, who played Paul Reid in and he took one touch and scored a brilliant goal to make it 5-1.
Town weren’t finished and the goal of the game came when Jamie Loran, Sam Watkin combined to free up Davie Dyer and he played a brilliant ball centrally to Liam Brennan who dummied the ball and let it run to Shane O’Keeffe who finished first time into the top corner to complete his hat-trick.
Mullingar Town showed massive character in this game and showed what teamwork and playing for the badge can achieve, and any of the players could have been man of the match. However, with a hat-trick and two assists, Town's number 7 Shane O'Keeffe was at times unplayable in this game and gets a well deserved Man of the Match accolade.
The Town squad on Sunday was: Adrian Rapacki, Jamie Loran, Bubba Charles, Davie Mimnagh, Liam Brennan, Paul Reid, Shane O’Keeffe, Davie Dyer, Daragh Kiernan, Nathan McCullagh, Sam Watkin.