League Report: Cabinteely 2 - 0 Athlone Town

Cabinteely beat Athlone Town 2-0 on Saturday night at Stradbrook with Roddy Collins’ tenure as Athlone manager starting with a defeat. It was a Marty Waters brace that gave Pat Devlin’s team the win.

The early minutes of the game were quite cagey with both teams cutting out each other’s attacks with not a lot of goalmouth action.

The first real shot in anger came just after the sixth minute when Cabinteely’s Evan Galvin cut inside onto his right foot but Igor Labuts was equal to his shot.

Cabo then started to take control of the game with nice quick short passing in between the lines creating problems for Athlone but it was the visitors who had the next chance when a Walter Alexis Innernrri shot just went past the Cabinteely post.

Cabinteely then put a lovely passing move together around the box with Marty Waters playing a lovely pass into Joe Doyle but he just got under the ball too much and it hit the underside of the crossbar.

Next Athlone’s Jason Lyons turned well before shooting just past Mick Kelly’s goal. Waters then had another chance which was easily saved by Labuts who went on to make numerous saves to keep his team in the match.

Labuts’ impressive first half saves included a fine impressive double save from Waters before the Cabo player had an ambitious attempt trying to lob the Athlone goalkeeper which fell just wide of the post.

The second half started off brightly as Doyle burst down the right-hand side for Cabinteely. With the Athlone defence nowhere to be seen he squared the ball for Evan Galvin who put the ball over the bar from six yards out when it was harder to miss.

Conor Barry then had his shot just put wide after he struck the ball beautifully after a Jason Lyons  layoff on the edge of the Cabinteely box.

It got worse from Athlone just before the hour mark as they conceded a penalty. Joe Dwyer brought down Waters in the box who was giving their defence problems all night. He got up to take the penalty himself and put Cabo one up with Labuts getting a hand to it but he couldn’t keep it out.

The next big chance went to the visitors as patient build up play around the box ended up with a one-two between David Brooks and Cathal Keogh who really should have done better as his effort went straight at ‘keeper Mick Kelly.

Waters went down the left-hand side and put in an inviting cross to be finished off by Doyle who got onto the end of it but could not direct it goal bound as his effort just went over.

Athlone pressed for an equalizer late on and had a penalty appeal turned down. Cabinteely then broke down the right-hand side on the counter-attack with substitute Michael Scott playing a good ball across to Waters for his second to seal the game off for Cabo.

This was Cabinteely first win in 10 games as they move up fourth in the table leapfrogging Shelbourne in the process. As for Athlone they stay second from bottom losing their eighth game from their last 11. It iss safe to say that Roddy Collins has a lot of work to do if he is going to get Athlone up the table.

Cabinteely: Mick Keely; Joe Doyle, Kevin Knight, Conor Keely, Sean Fitzpatrick; Christian Latefa, Jack Watson, Anthony Dolan, Kieran Waters; Jason Byrne (Cory Gavin 10), Evan Galvin (Michael Scott 90)

Subs not used: Jack Menton, Paul Fox, Mark Hanlon, Rob McGee, Aaron Robinson.

Yellow Card: Corey Gavin (63).

Athlone Town: Igor Labuts; Federico Hernandez (Peter Walsh 51), David Brooks, Niall Scully, Joe Dwyer; Conor Barry, Sam Molloy, Cathal Keogh, Walter Innernrri; Jason Lyons (Sean McGrain 72), Chris Rodrigues (Ryan Gaffney 41).

Subs not used:  None.

Yellow Cards: Walter Innernrri (52)

Referee: Kevin Keeler

Man of The Match: Marty Waters