Whitehall Rangers 1 - OLV 35s 0

OLV squad ;                                         Mark McCabe

                              Garreth Donovan   Martin Dunican  Willie Murphy

                                                                Dave Kelly

                                 James McCabe   James Coates(C)  Anto Connolly

                                 
                                     Rory Connolly Jonny Dutton  Mark Matthews


                              Anto Maher  Paddy McEvoy  Pat Heary  Phil Lowndes

Manager ; John Lowndes

DEVASTATING.............Possibly the only word to describe this defeat away to Whitehall on Sunday, finally playing a team with about the same level of expectations for the season, from the opening whistle Olv absolutely battered the home team and should have been at least two goals ahead in the opening stages through their many efforts on goal but there seems to be some sort of HEX on the club as once again all the right things were done in the build up play, some great play involving all positions on the pitch but the ball just WOULD not go into the goal as Rory Connolly found out with Olv's best chance but for the 4th game in a row the woodwork stopped Olv from taking the lead ,big Martin Dunican had the next best chance to open the scoring but his storming run and powerfull near-post header went a few inches wide,Olv were really clicking as on the left Murphy, Maher and Anto Connolly gelled well they attacked and defended as a solid unit, the same can said for the right side with Donovan, James McCabe and R Connolly all doing a fine job ,the spine of the team consisted of Dunican, Kelly, Coates and Matthews up top who all played really well also ,the half played out with Whitehall having only one shot on target which keeper Mark McCabe dealt with well at his near post.

HALFTIME 0-0

John lowndes made just a couple of changes at the break as Pat Heary came on as centre forward and Phil Lowndes coming in to slot into centre midfield where once again James Coates had played very well,it was Coates who went back to his defensive link role to give Dave Kelly a rest as he had played very well in his first start of the league after a long injury lay-off, the game resumed to the pace of the first half and Olv continued on from where they had left off, pressing Whitehall but getting no luck in front of goal as livewire Matthews had a few shots and another effort hitting the crossbar for the second week running, Heary ,McCabe and McEvoy all had good efforts on goal but as the clock ticked down the lads on the line could just feel it was going to be another one of those days when a bit of bad luck was going to put a downer on the outcome and with ten minutes left that is exactly what happened when a Whitehall attack seemed to have been broken up but the ball was played back to the edge of the area and as the attacker struck his shot the ball looked to be miss hit and it came awkwardly off his boot and looped over McCabe into the back of the net, Olv closed out the came on the attack and having a couple more shots but the game ended with Whitehall taking all three points.

FULLTIME 1-0

This defeat was probably the hardest one to take so far because for the whole 90 minutes we played at a high tempo and didn't tire out as we have done in previous games ,another couple of positives were the return of two players from injury, Dave Kelly coming back from a three month lay-off and particularly Anto Maher who started his first game in over 18 months as he was called into the starting lineup to replace Dutton who aggrivated an injury in the warm up,next week we have a home game in the Clifford cup so hopefully a positive result will finally come our way.