ACL Div.1 Mullingar Shamrocks 3-10 Milltown 1-13

Mullingar Shamrocks concluded their satisfactory ACL Div.1 programme on Friday evening with a victory against Milltown after leading by 2-5 to 0-4 at the interval. Dillon Matthews opened the scoring in the first few minutes with one of his specials. He sped through the Milltown defence from deep and blasted the ball to the net. Nobody does this particular act better than Dillon. Almost immediately Milltown carved open the Shamrocks defence, but Philly Shaw saved brilliantly. Jordan Warde scored two great points, one from either side of the field to add to Shamrocks total. Welcome back from injury Jordan. Tom Lynn pointed for Milltown. Dean Moore pointed and then Philly Shaw from the restart, Conn O’Hanlon and Denis Corroon combined to send Dillon Matthews through at full pace for the second time and once again the Milltown net was rattled. Ross Corroon launched the final point of the half to give Mullingar Shamrocks a comfortable 0-7 interval lead. It could have been more as poor shooting helped to keep Milltown in the game.

Milltown posed some difficult questions during the second half and outscored Shamrocks 1-9 to 1-5 over the thirty minutes. There was a bit of unease over the final minutes and some nervous fellows were to be seen checking Twitter feeds from other venues as the r word was mentioned should a Shamrocks victory not materialise. But this was never on the cards.

On the restart Philly Shaw and Conn O’Hanlon combined to prevent a goal before Daragh Hynes eventually pointed. A string of points from Hynes kept Milltown in touch during this half. Points from Denis Corroon (0-3) and Zach Aherne (0-1) added to the Shamrocks total and maintained the 0-7 gap (2-9 to 0-8) and a goal from Dean Moore (created by several fine passes) extended that lead (3-9 to 0-10). Denis Corroon completed the Mullingar Shamrocks total with one of his special points before Milltown added 1-2 in the final minutes to cause some concern amongst the Shamrocks onlookers. In the end all was well and Shamrocks ended what was in overall terms a very good league campaign. The work of rebuilding continues.

Mullingar Shamrocks: Philly Shaw; Ryan Blundell, Conn O’Hanlon, Efe Siode; Niall Hardiman, Pearse Corroon, Dillon Matthews (2-0); Denis Corroon (0-4), Jack Gillen; John O’Reilly, Dean Moore (1-2), Alan Cashman (Andrew Shaw); Zach Aherne (0-1,)[Emmet Walsh], Ross Corroon (0-1) [Sean Hynes], Jordan Warde (0-2)