On Thursday evening last Kilmurry u18 girls travelled to Moneen to take on league leaders Castlebar Town. Town unusually started the game slowly letting the Kilmurry girls dictate the early play with the first five minutes played in the Town half, but the Town defence stood firm marshalled by captain Michelle Kelly and Danielle Caldwell with Aoife Brody and Melissa Patterson covering the flanks.
After this period Town started to get a foothold in the game with Anna Touhy and Maria Staunton finding a balance in midfield, the breakthrough goal came after 15 minutes when Touhy sent a ball up the right wing where she found Belinda Patterson surging through to coolly slot home for the opener.
The equaliser came quickly though when a smart free kick over the Town defence found Rachel Kearns and the Mayo striker made no mistake rounding Town keeper Kirsten Sheeran to slot home.
This brought Town to life and after a series of attacks and near misses Laura Brody connected with a fantastic left foot volley from a Belinda Patterson cross to put Town 2 – 1 up. Then the strike force of Erina Flannery and Rebecca Lawless linked up when Flannery slipped a pass through the Kilmurry defence and Lawless hit the net with a lovely right foot strike leaving the scores 3 – 1 at half time.
At half time both teams made a couple of changes with Town bringing on Chloe Morley for Lawless, Sarah Peters for Caldwell, and Katie Cronnoly for Laura Brody. This seemed to settle the game down until about 15 minutes to go when Flannery broke through to make it a three goal lead for Town. The game should have been done and dusted but Kilmurry never give up and with two cracking strikes from outside the box they quickly got the score back to 4 – 3. But the Town management made a couple of tactical changes and that was the end of the scoring.
The Town girls have now won all five of their u18 league games and a win away to Ballina next week will see them lift the league title. This has been a great season as most of the girls are u18 next year again and they are already in the Mayo Cup final and also the Connacht cup final.
