Drom & Inch book a place in the county intermediate football final with a comfortable win over Fethard
Fethard ---------------------------- 0-5
Fethard were eliminated from the intermediate football championship at the penultimate stage by a much stronger Drom & Inch who deserved to advance to the final with a comfortable five point victory.
From the outset the gulf between the teams in terms of power and strength up the middle of the pitch was evident as a young Fethard team struggled to cope with the physicality of their superior opponents.
Drom & Inch were always in control of this contest. Fethard were wasteful in front of goal with some wild shooting from good positions costing them dearly as they clocked up seven wides in the first half.
The south side managed to record just one score in that first half, a free after twenty four minutes from captain Cathal O Mahony, at a time when Drom were down to fourteen men as a result of a black card shown to centre back Emmett Moloney.
Drom, very patient in their build up play, scored six points in that first half to put themselves in a comfortable position. They never looked like scoring a goal that would have killed the game off but neither did Fethard as their forwards failed to hold onto the ball in the tackle as the Drom defenders were dominant.
Fethard captain Cathal O Mahony scored a second point from a free for Fethard ten minutes into the second half but they had to wait until fifty minutes into the game to take their first point from play.
Their outstanding player, Jody Sheehan at centre back, surged forward to take a score to give Fethard some hope of salvaging something from the game as they were five points adrift with ten minutes left.
On the hour mark David Collins increased Drom’s lead out to six points and in injury time Fethard, to their credit, continued to battle.
Centre forward Brian Healy scored two excellent points from play in a two minute spell in time added on but it was too little too late as substitute Darragh Kennedy closed out the game for Drom with a well taken score to give Drom a double score advantage, ten points to five at the final whistle.
Drom fully deserved their victory. They were the stronger team from the start of the game and while Fethard showed a lot of industry in attack , in particular Jack Purcell and Conor Harrington, they made little headway against a well drilled Drom defence until the closing stages when Brian Healy recorded those two quality strikes from distance.
Had Fethard shown more accuracy in front of goal in the first half they could have been a lot closer to Drom at the end but the wild shooting on their part allowed Drom to edge further and further ahead and Fethard never threatened enough in front of goal to close that gap to put Drom under any kind of sustained pressure.
Read a full report of the match in next weeks Nationalist.