We faced a tough away day in the hospital grounds of St Otterans to face Villa today and came back home with three precious pts.
A frantic opening 10 minutes saw the home side get the better of us in the midfield department without creating too many opportunities. We grew into the game and most of our good play and creativity came from our left side with Evan and Ryan Carroll dominating their area.
We opened the scoring after 15 minutes when Evan turned his opponent and played a super ball through for Lee Tracey to finish calmly .
We started dominating possession for long periods and were unfortunate not to add 2 or 3 more goals before half time through some superb work from the midfield and delightful passing moves between Evan and Lee.
Second half saw the home team assert more pressure on us and forced us into long periods of defending on the edge of our own box.
The quality of defending was of the highest order and the second goal came from a brilliant piece of defending from James Delahunty. His clearance found Lee inside the Villa half and with 2 defenders around he seemed out of options until Jack Ryan raced past him and a perfectly weighted pass gave Jack the oppourtunity to slide the ball under the keeper for 2 nil.
The two goal cushion didn’t have the calming effect it should have had and our general play and work rate dropped a few levels .The continuing pressure from the home side yielded a goal to set up nervous last 15 minutes for us.
To be fair to the lads they showed great maturity in their defending and showed enough belief in their ability to get the win. With villa pushing for the equaliser they were leaving themselves vulnerable on the counter attack. We broke out quickly on several occasions only to be halted by the concession of frees to halt any momentum we were trying to build.
The third goal was scored by Lee Tracey when an unbelievably struck free from James took out the entire Villa team to put Lee into the box and his excellent first touch allowed him time and space to rifle his shot past the keeper to seal a 3-1 victory.
Decent performance to
to send us to the top of the table with just two games to play.
A big thanks to the huge number of parents who came along to support the lads again today .
It’s greatly appreciated by all involved in the group.

Piltown came to town this morning. It was a perfect day for football . We started like a steam train pressing them high up the pitch . Jamie Croke chased and harried their back four into numerous mistakes and it was down to his hard work that he latched onto a hopefull ball n crashed the ball to the net to take an early lead. Our back four provided a launching pad for attack after attack giving piltown no sight of goal. The silky skills of finbar purcell and billie delahunty terroised the piltown defence and soon led to finbar slotting home 2 quick goals leaving us 3.0 up at the break. We started the 2nd half like we ended the 1st with flowing attacking football. Canice kinsella owned the centre of the park and snuffed out the threat of the extra piltown midfielder. 10 mins into the 2nd half our pressure paid off as we recieved a penalty. Canice stood up and calmly blasted the ball to the net . Piltown threw everything at us but the back 5 of paddy t murphy, alex kennedy, sean kearns, liam joy and matthew walsh were outstanding not giving an inch. However we conceded two late consolation goals in the final moments with the final whistle in sight.
Man of the match was finbar purcell with the full back 5 running him very close. Best performance of the year from this group.

Tomorrow:
U12 home to Piltown B,
Kick off 10.30
2nd division cup away to Ballinroad, kick off 2pm

Sunday:
U10 girls home to Bohs, kick off 1.30
U14 girls away to Tramore, kick off 2pm
Youths away to Villa, kick off 2pm
Best of luck to all teams and support for them all is most welcome.

Friday evening kick off away to Ballinroad who are joint top of the table. The game kicked off at a frantic pace with both sides enjoying equal possession. A very close encounter throughout however we seemed to have the better of things on the break. Great to see Sam Hartwell back and he caused all sorts of problems for the defence who simply could not live with his pace. Liam Hogan was solid at the back beside Mikey Cronin who was as equally good. Ciara o’Keefe put in a player of the match performance and was excellent throughout. Conor Dermody also held the back line with great strength and pace. Conor was replaced by Denis Kinsella who was outstanding this evening. Alex Bailey played in a free role in the middle of the park tonight and he was involved in absolute everything from defending to attacking, he won every tackle and set the tone for the whole team going forward. Newcomer Sean Lennon again was a thorn in the side of Ballinroad with his blistering pace and created many chances. Tom Conway latched on to some nice balls and used his strength very well to move forward. Goal Machine Eoin O’Callaghan got the only goal from a well worked passing triangle with Sean Lennon and Lee Freyne who is playing out of his skin in the holding midfield role. Adam Conway was the spine of the team in goal again giving instructions and a safe pair of hands. Emily Blackmore and Daniel Roberts with Matthew Morahan being the substitutes. Great result in a league of tough opposition and especially against a team who have routed most of them! Well done everyone

A little player profile in this week’s News and Star that might interest a few locals.

Waterford U12 Girls Development Squad hosted Carlow in Carriganore for a series of games this evening and we had two girls making their debuts this evening with goalkeeper Mia Ponce de Leon and Ella Brennan.
There were 3 games for the Waterford U12s against Carlow this evening with the teams changed for each game. 1st match Waterford won 1-0. Second match Mia played in goal. The score was 0-1 to Carlow. In the third match Ella played and the score was 5-0 to Waterford. Ella played up front and was full of energy and got stuck in.
Both girls were excellent as were all the Waterford players, reports from Carriganore is the two girls really enjoyed the games and can’t wait for their next outing.
Well done girls.

Big well done to academy coach Mike Molloy who completed the PDP 1 course in Kilkenny yesterday in horrendous conditions.

With Chelsea drawing today, there was another 6 fallers. We now have 37 left standing going forward to week 4. Unlucky to those who fell over the weekend and best of luck to all left standing.

A blustery cold afternoon in Faithlegg where the golden oldies of the club were involved in a crucial league game for Park Rangers, win and they went top as DLS v Dunmore was postponed this afternoon. So our patched up team forgot to play along and as usual created plenty of chances without the end product. Neville Synnott hung up a wonderful free kick to really rattle Rangers to go 1-0 but a wind assisted effort crawled over the line to level things up. With time almost up and Park Rangers seeing their league title hopes gone up in smoke, a rather controversial penalty was awarded in the last minute and Park Rangers thought Christmas came early as they sit top of the pile this evening waiting for the rescheduling of DLS v Dunmore. Great effort from our boys throughout the year, a lot of injuries throughout the campaign hampered things but JJ can be proud of a decent campaign and still a cup to be played for. The flight to Lourdes for the 10 injured players will leave Knock Airport next weekend in the hope they’ll be fit for the cup.