Football Championship Result
Friday 26th August, 2005

Celts Reach Final in Junior Football Breakthrough
Junior Football Championship Semi Final
Celts 2-14 Young Irelanders 0-18

In this crucial game played in freezing conditions under the floodlights of Kezar Stadium, the first half was pretty much handed to the Celts on a plate by a YI side that was making way too many mistakes and letting the youth have the run of the field, culminating in a goal by Jimmy Flynn.

With a half time deficit of seven points, Young Irelanders looked on the verge of collapse as the Celts worked the ball up the field and got warmed up with goal number two by David Tierney.

In what was to become a remarkable comeback, YI started gaining some composure, made more use of the short ball, and started advancing up the field to take score after score. Many breaking balls went to YI as they began fluently taking scores from half forward, getting a staggering eight points in quick succession without reply. The Celts seemed unable to take control and began to give away a lot of frees as their lead crumbled and the YIs made themselves very much at home in the Celts’ half of the field.

Things worsened for the underage side as they lost a player following an incident where YI’s John McCormack took an elbow in an injured rib and lay on the ground for a few minutes, however he was able to get up and get back into the game.

When play resumed, the Celts seemed to have settled after the impromptu break, and Brian Tierney re-opened the scoring to counter the point production line that had been set up by YIs. They began to get some nice opportune balls in mid field and intercept the longer balls that YI were sending up the field, but their marking was very casual and it didn’t always look like they were going to dominate.

In the closing minutes play got very scrappy and slowed to a crawl with stoppages galore, but Young Irelanders kept pounding away to try and get a last minute winning goal that never came.

The Celts now face Sons of Boru in the junior football final.

Referee: Daire O'Connor, Michael Cusack's