23 March, 2012
Our senior team travelled to Baltinglass last Friday
evening having won their first two county league games. The first
half was a very tight affair with both teams level Bray 1-1 to
Baltinglass 4 points. Both sets of defences were on top in the
first half with Baltinglass racing into a 3 points to 1 lead before
Bray were awarded a penalty which Stephen Mc Nicholas calmly
slotted to bring Bray to within a point. This was soon followed by
a second Bray score from play again by Stephen
to level the game at half time with both teams
missing chances. The second half saw Baltinglass dominant in the
possession stakes but Bray were working very hard and had a high
number of turnovers in their favour due to their collective
workrate. In that second half Baltinglass went ahead by 3 points
but Bray through another free brought the deficit to 2 with 10
minutes to go. Then Baltingalss went ahead by three again with 9
minutes to go and at this stage Bray had a player sent off for a
second yellow card. Play continued for the next 6 minutes scoreless
but with three minutes to go Bray staged a fantastic fightback but
a player short. Firstly John Henderson was very unlucky not to
score a goal after a great move and run lead to a 20 yard shot that
rebounded off the crossbar. Rory Breslin was sharpest to the
rebound and kicked a great point from play. Then Stephen Mc
Nickolas kicked a long range free to bring the game to within a
point with 1 minute to go. In the last 30 seconds Bray under fierce
pressure put their best move of the match together when 6 players
handled the ball and finally Captain Sean O Neill kicked a
wonderful levelling score on the run coming up from corner back.
While the quality of the game may not have been the highest Brays
squad including subs showed tremendous
character to come back in the last three minutes with 14 players.
Both teams will have learned a lot from this game and from Brays
perspective they remain unbeaten after three games. The next game
is home against Stratford, further details regarding this will be
available on the website shortly.
Final Score: Baltinglass 0-8 Bray Emmets 1-5
Team: P O'Keefe, S O'Neill, C Power, A Benson, A Murphy, L
McGraynor, R McAnaspie, N McGraynor, J O'Keefe, J Henderson, S
McNicholas, E McMahon, D Finn, R Breslin, R
Cunningham.
