Cork Senior Cup Final
On Monday our Boys Senior Soccer team won the Cork Senior Cup for the first time in the history of the school. This was an enormous achievement for the players and coaching staff seeing as they were competing against other Cork schools who have had both provincial and national success at this level in recent years.
Carrigaline Community School were the opposition in the final and they were also the defending champions from 2017. The game was played on the main pitch in CIT, a venue which had happy memories for many of our players who recently won a County Hurling Championship for KCS on the same ground. The conditions were not ideal, a steady drizzle made the surface slippery which made controlling the ball extremely difficult. These treacherous conditions nearly counted against us after just thirty seconds of play whenthe Carrigaline strikerlatched on to a ricochet and went through one-on-one with our keeper, Luke O Callaghan, however Luke was equal to the task and made a smart save diving low to his left.
Following this early scare KCS came more in to the game and similar to previous rounds the midfield trio of Darragh Crowley, Chis Healy and Luke Desmond began dominating play. The game then entered a period where both teams fought doggedly for possession and field position while clear cut chances were few and far between. Eventually the breakthrough came for Kinsale thanks to Stan Russell’s willingness to chase down and compete with his opposite number for possession. Stan won the ball on the right wing, he cut a beautiful pass back to Luke Desmond who had the vision and guile to pick out the lurking Kaelan O Rourke who finished from five yards.
Following the goal Carrigaline upped the tempo of the game and began pressing KCS high up the pitch. The KCS defence stood firm and thanks to some last-ditch tackles form Donnacha O Mahony and Tom O Connell our goal remained unbreeched. With twenty minutes to go in the half Carrigaline were awarded a dubious corner and from the corner Carrigaline drew level.
The equaliser for Carrigaline acted as a catalyst for KCS to impose their game plan on the match with Chris Mitchell and Eoin Redmond to the fore. Momentum swung in favour of KCS who began probing for their second goal which duly came following a period of sustained pressure. Sean Twomey made his presence felt in the opposition boxand following a succession of corner kicks he was there tobundle home our second and what proved to be the decisive goal in this tight game.
The second half saw an immense rear-guard action by the Kinsale boys. Carrigaline attacked from the outset, they changed their formation to put more pressure on the KCS defence, but they could not get the vital equalising goal. Luke O Callaghan made a number of telling interventions between the sticks whilst all ten outfield players battled for every ball and every decision. Kaelan O Rourke had a chance to put the game beyond any doubt in the dying minutes but the Carrigaline keeper made a top class save to thwart Kaelan and then seconds later Carrigaline came within inches of getting an equalising goal. This frantic passage of play proved to be the last action of the game and the ref blew his whistlebestowing upon Kinsale Community School’s Senior Soccer team the tile of Champions of Cork for 2018.
