Competition: Leinster Senior League Sunday Senior Division 1B

Date: 16 April 2023

Result: Rush Athletic 2 -0 Finglas United

Tickets: free, walk up

Attendance: circa 150

Game/ Experience Rating:  ☆☆☆

The Game: My local side, Rush Athletic, are pushing for promotion to the 3rd tier of the Leinster Senior League (which is, in practise, the 5th tier of Irish football). Three teams go up, and four are in serious contention, including today’s opponents Fingas United, who arrived with a remarkable 11 game consecutive winning streak, having started the season poorly. All four sides are now as near as makes no difference level, and whoever misses out on going up in a few weekends time will have been seriously unfortunate.

In this game, Finglas started well, with Rush clinging on a bit in the early stages of what turned out to be quite a bitty contest. The game reached 0-0 at half time, and I felt Finglas were the more likely scorers

Early in the second half, the Rush goalkeeper was sent off for a challenge on their winger, a bit of a borderline call I felt, but if anything it pushed Rush on and they dominated from then on, stiffling Finglas going forward and scoring two on the break. It’s a vital win from a promotion perspective, though a couple more are probably necessary to firm things up. It’d be really cool to have a fifth tier team in Rush next year, with teams like Cherry Orchard and St Kevin’s, both iconic Dublin amateur sides, likely to be in the same division, so fingers crossed they pull it off.

The ground:  I think I’ve said all there is to say about St Catherine’s: it’s a quaint sea-view pitch with standing room around the edges, but there’s little more to it than that. Except when the coffee van turns up and creates a kind of snack terrace. Still a lovely place to watch football.

Extras: No coffee van today, I was genuinely disappointed.

Assorted asides: I posted about what I felt was quite unsportmanlike behaviour from one side on Twitter after going to this game. I got half a dozen replies, which, as you can see above, is about 4-5% of the people at the game. They all disagreed with me, but then they would, they were all connected to the side I was calling out. I deleted it in the end because arguing about football at a park level just strikes me as a bit ridiculous. The whole thing was bizarre. Just goes to show you never know who’s watching on the internet.

My totals for the year so far:

Games: 9. Home wins: 5 Draws: 3 Away wins: 1

Goals: 23. Home goals: 15. Away goals: 8. Goals per game: 2.56

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