Midleton V Castlehaven 
On Saturday last 14 Oct Castlehaven made the 100km journey to challenge for a place in the semi final of this years Cork County minor D Championship.
Missing two of our influencal players Kari McEvoy and Lucy Wallace both out through injury, this was going to be a tough assignment.
The game started with Abby winning the throw in who gave it to Ali who found Molly in space who slotted the ball past the Castlehaven keeper. What a start.
But slowly and surely Castlehaven began to settle and slotted over 4 unanswered points. We hit back for another 2 and after 10 mins Castlehaven took over and blitzed us. They drove forward from their backline and with our girls not tracking back, the backs were completely over run. At the 20min mark the half time whistle couldn’t come fast enough. To make matters worse we lost the services of Ali who had to come off with a dislocated finger.
Half time score; Midleton 1:4 Castlehaven 7:6.
If you do the maths that’s 7 points to 27.
What does one do here?
A welcome break and a time to reflect.
Rhyanna stepped forward and volunteered to go in goal to allow Rhea to take up a position outfield. We asked the girls to go back out for the second half and give us something to cheer about, and by god they did.
How many times have you heard a game summed up by the cliché ‘it was a game of two halves’ This was one of these games. The first half we want to banish from our memories and the second half that we will remember for years to come.
The girls were only given one instruction going back on the field ‘Goals’
Our defence tightened up and led by a transformed Claudia at full pack pushed up the field. Incredibly after 20 mins we had cut their 20 point lead down to 5 points and hunting the game. The only danger with pushing up so high in the field is when the opposition overturn the ball there are huge gaps in the back and Castlehaven capitalised on this twice in the last 10 mins to run in for 2 goals. We were not going to come back from that. They kept going right to the final whistle. You could not ask for more from an incredible group of girls and never fail to surprise us. We asked them to give us something to cheer about and they did in spades.
Score full-time Midleton 5-9 Castlehaven 9-10
All is not lost, we are still in the East Cork Minor League Final against Fermoy, and the way we played in the second half, we fear no one….
Team: Rhea Buckley, Rayanna Power, Lizzie Phiri, Claudia Kearney, Roisín O’Callaghan, Deirdre Corcoran, Ali Smith, Abby Quirke (0-2), Sadhbh Beausang (1-5), Laura O’Leary, Aoife Franklin, Molly Beausang (2-0), Alice Reddy, Lucy Kenneally, Katie Horgan, Clodagh Finn (2-2), Ellen Ryan
Due to the weather warning that is in effect for Cork tomorrow there will be No Training for all age groups. A text message will be sent with confirmation.
MidletonLGFA_Minor2017