Club News

05/10/02 Under-21's cause major upset as Portglenone go out of the championship

Portglenone were one of the fancied sides in this year's Under-21 football championship, in fact with a large number of their players involved in both the Under-21 and Senior County teams they were expected to do very well, certainly to beat St. John's.
So it will be with heavy hearts and disappointed supporters that they will have made the return journey back up the county after their thrashing at the hands of a superior St. John's side at Corrigan Park. How wrong the pundits can be...

St. John's got off to the best possible start in this championship fixture with a goal and a point coming in quick succession within the first 4 minutes of play from John Mead and Gary Rafferty. Portglenone took some nice points to stay in touching distance but this was to set the tone for the rest of the game as St. John's never trailed at any stage throughout the match.

Conal Kelly took 2 great points from frees to maintain the Johnnies momentum, John Mead added a second goal to his tally midway though the first half before Gerard Cunningham got in on the act with a good point towards the end of the first half.

Defensively St. John's were outstanding and the defenders displayed some of the dogged determination which has become a St. John's trademark over the years. The game became quite a heated affair the further along it progressed with both teams playing hard, physical football and despite Portglenone looking the bigger side St. John's were more than a match for them.

The second half saw no slow down in the St. John's work effort or in the frenetic pace at which they played the game. When Gary Rafferty was felled in the box Conal Kelly - producing one of his strongest performances of the year - stepped up to take the penalty. Whilst many supporters may have felt the point was the safer option there was only one place the ball was going as far as Conal was concerned - in the back of the net. His goal put St. John's into an insurmountable lead - that is until they suffered the loss of Neil Reynolds.

Minutes after the goal went in Neil was judged to have fouled a Portglenone player and was given his marching orders by the referee. Could 14 St. John's men manage to emerge victorious against an undeniably strong, classy Portglenone side for the large remainder of the game?

Not only could St. John's ride this storm but they still scored a further goal and a point to seal the win. Gareth Clarke, who had been through the wars somewhat during the game (suffering an elbow to his chin in the first half and then, shortly afterwards, a haymaker of a punch to the side of his face), must have thoroughly enjoyed getting his name on the scoresheet with a delightful point towards the end of the second half from an acute angle out on the left wing.

Finally Gary Rafferty, one of the stars of the afternoon, used some suspiciously silky 'socceresque' dribbling to great effect before slotting the ball past the Portglenone keeper to finish the opposition off. Whilst Portglenone kept getting up field to register points on the board it simply wasn't good enough as St. John's cantered home to victory 4-6 to 0-9 (nine points the better).

All the over the pitch St. Johns were immense - Darren Rafferty (the captain) led by example from the full back line with some good clearances though he was more than ably assisted by Neil Reynolds and JonJo Hartigan (producing some superb catching throughout). The half-back line were water tight (and needed to be), at midfield though young McGlinchey fairly earned his stripes with an accomplished performance against probably the strongest looking midfield pairing at this age level. Conal Kelly, Harry Connolly and Gary Rafferty caused Portglenone more problems than you could count and in the full forward line John Mead impressed and Gerard Cunningham shook off his American vacation to turn in a strong effort. All in all a great afternoon's football for the club.

 

 

		St. John's
		N. McCallin
J.J. Hartigan		D Rafferty	N. Kelly
S. Mallon		A. Press	A. Douglas
		K. McGlinchey G. Clarke
G. Rafferty		C. Kelly	H. Connolly
J. Mead		N. Reynolds	G. Cunningham
(Subs: P. Rooney for H. Connolly)