Friendly
Westport United 0
Sligo Rovers 4
THE rain stayed away, a big crowd turned out, the pitch looked in great condition and everyone got to see the top professional team in the country at the moment playing some really good football at the Sports Park. A good night was had by all.
Tom Tarmey, referred to as the ‘lucky chairman’ by the PA announcer, Ronnie Rosco, was delighted with the occasion. “Everyone enjoyed that,” he told The Mayo News. “We had a great crowd and Sligo brought the majority of their first team and they took it really seriously.
“We have spent a lot of money and energy on the pitch surface in the past few months and we’re happy with how it has turned out. But there’s still a lot of work to do to get it to where we want it be at and we’ll keep doing that,” he said.
Lucky chairman? Most are familiar with that old line from Gary Player about the harder he works the luckier he gets. That would sum Tom up.
On the footballing front, it was always going to be a big ask for a junior team to cope with a professional outfit.
But United did well and with a bit of luck could have had a couple of goals. David Hoban certainly rattled their defence on a couple of occasions and there were some really good efforts from Vinny O’Malley and Jamie Fallon.
Kieran Mulchrone, one half of the joint management team, was happy enough with the performance.
“It’s never nice to lose but I think we all learned a lot tonight about how the game is played at a higher level. Everything is done at a quicker pace; they’re just used to having to think quicker than at our level so I’m hoping that our boys will have picked up some important lessons from that.
“But we did fine. We played some good stuff and had them troubled on a few occasions. The trick for us now is to put the lessons we have learned tonight into practice when the season resumes next week.
“We’ve started the season well but there’s a long way to go and we can’t start to slacken off,” he said.
The manager of Sligo Rovers, Ian Barraclough, was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the opposition and the attendance at the match.
“You can see that it’s (Westport United) a well-run football club with the crowd that turned out and the standard of players.
“We trained really hard for the past few days with a view to playing this game with a level of fatigue and the players worked really hard for the ninety minutes. It was a great work out for us and it went really well. We’re delighted.”
There was a lot of Mayo interest in the Sligo set-up with David Cawley (Ballina), Marty Owens (Charlestown) and Ryan Connolly (Ballyglass) all starting.
Both Cawley and Connolly have had experience in the English professional game while Owens is impressing in his first season at the Showgrounds since moving there from Castlebar Celtic last year.
It was the Tubbercurry man, Rafael Cretaro, who was the star of the first half with two clinically-taken goals in the third and fortieth minutes. The second was a delightful volley after a fine cross from Ryan Connolly.
In between the goals United gave as good as they got and David Hoban went close on a couple of occasions.
There was also a volley apiece form Darren Browne and Vinny O’Malley that had Richard Brush worried while Alan Carroll fired in a lovely cross that O’Malley just failed to make contact with.
Despite the raft of second half substitutions, the game never lost its edge.
Jeff Henderson and Liam Martin completed the scoring for Rovers but United had their own opportunities, especially from Jamie Fallon and David Hoban.
The game finished as everyone expected it to, with a Sligo win, but in reality there were no losers at all.
Westport United
G Cunningham; A O’Malley, M Geraghty, S Tagg, K Joyce, D Cameron, D Browne, A Carroll, G McLoughlin, D Hoban, V O’Malley.
Subs: M Gibbons for Cunningham; D Horkan for Browne; N Tierney for Joyce; J Lawless for Geraghty; K Browne for Tagg; Darren Hoban for Cameron; D Scahill for K Browne; M McNaly for David Hoban; J Fallon for McLoughlin; JP O’Gorman for V O’Malley; S Higgins for A O’Malley; J Smith for Carroll.
Sligo Rovers
R Brush; M Owens, G Peers, J Henderson, R Gaynor, D Ventre, L Lynch, D Cawley, C McBrien, R Connnolly, R Cretaro.
Subs: J Dykes for Peers; A Murphy for Brush; L Martin for Cretaro; I Davoren for Gaynor; P Millaien for Cawley; A Keane for Owens; M McGoldrick for Ventre.
Referee: P Foley
Assistants: M Walshe, B Blake
