Colemanstown maintained their winning run on route to claiming the Championship League title when they came from 2-0 down to win 3-2 at home on Sunday morning against Cregmore/ Claregalway. On route to their final league match, they recorded 8 successive League wins to reach the summit.
This time they came back from a position of early trauma as the visitors were by far the hungrier and dominant side. In the early exchanges Cregmore hit the crossbar & side net before finding the opener on 15mins. In fact they went 2-0 up by 25mins after their in-form winger finished off a good individual move with an equally good finish. Cregmore came close to scoring a 3rd soon after only for an exceptional one handed save by Fionn Flattery to push the ball over the crossbar. Colemanstown had a chance to claw one back when Jamie Nutley knocked the ball down nicely for Kyle Madden whose superb through ball split Cregmore’s defence, found Dylan Murphy bursting through with impressive acceleration but his effort skinned the post. Colemanstown did get back in contention before half time following good work by a battling Shane Duffy on the right wing, cut in across the box, found the inrushing Tiarnan Lohan who struck a sweet half volley with his left boot to rattle the net. 2-1 at half time.
A few half time changes saw Colemanstown settle well from the restart. David Geraghty up front caused much havoc. Colemanstown drew level midway through the 2nd half after Ross Lally won a double challenge in the middle of the field and his ball found Geraghty whose cross was deflected out for a corner. A trademark David Walsh resultant corner was met by Cillian Roche who had to stoop low to connect and his header pinged into the corner to make it 2-2. Colemanstown raised the tempo another notch as Cregmore failed to further threaten due primarily to a super Colemanstown defensive unit. With 10mins to play, came the pivotal score & match winner. Another good challenge this time from Josh Buckley saw him win a free which was taken quickly, Duffy got on the end of it, found David Geraghty who raced through the centre and finished a superb individual goal for Colemanstown to go 3-2 up. In the closing 10mins Kyle Madden put Geraghty through twice in similar fashion but the ref deemed him to be offside as Colemanstown battled manfully to the end. The last minute was marred by a nasty injury to a battling Matthew Keane who pressurised and chased Cregmore’s right back, keeper and left back to win the ball back as Cregmore attempted to work the ball out of defence; laid the ball back to Geraghty whose killer pass sought to find Matthew who had started his flight towards goal & the ball deflected off his wrist in a moment of pure bad luck. We wish Matthew a speedy recovery with his fractured wrist. 3-2 it ended as Gary Broderick & Kerrill Lally’s champions prevailed in a dig-deep performance.
Captain Kyle Madden delightfully accepted the cup from GFA secretary Ger Treacy. In his captains speech he thanked his team mates, their parents & the 2 wise men. The lads made their way by foot to Burkes, Colemanstown parading the cup on route. Thanks to Frank & Bernie Burke for the welcome pizzas supplied afterwards which were scoffed up pretty fast by a hungry bunch. Well done lads & management on a super unbeaten league run and worthy champions.
