Celtic ‘feeling pretty good’ after victory over Douglas Hall in FAI Cup
Castlebar Celtic manager Stevie Gavin was delighted with his side after they defeated Douglas Hall to reach the third round of the FAI Senior Cup. Picture: Miller/Sportsfile
There were all smiles on Saturday afternoon in the Castlebar Celtic camp as the club qualified for the Club Orange Men’s FAI Cup third round with a 1-0 victory over Douglas Hall in Cork.
Dylan Felle got the only goal of the game for Stevie Gavin’s side in the 20th minute in scorching hot conditions, and the team comfortably held out to get the result.
What made this more pleasing for Castlebar is that Douglas Hall are an intermediate team, meaning they operate at a level above them in the Irish football pyramid.
“We're delighted to come down and get into the third round of the FAI Senior Cup when we play at junior level and just beat an intermediate team,” Gavin explained.
“We're feeling pretty good at the minute.” Celtic spent weeks preparing for the Douglas Hall tie, and that involved hours of research by Gavin’s backroom team. They poured over details from old match reports and videos, before coming up with a plan that ultimately got the job done in Cork.
Declan Flynn did that work, and the coach left nothing to chance as he got Castlebar ready to make the journey down to Moneygourney.
“We had all the homework done on them,” Flynn explained. “We’d seen a few games and what have you, and we knew who the main threats were and it was just a case of nullifying that. Now, we had to take a bit of pressure there towards the end of the second half, but I thought defensively we were absolutely fantastic.
“I think our goalkeeper was very good. I think he only had a couple of saves to make, the rest of the work he had to do was long-range shots, so if you're forcing teams to do long-range shots, I think you're doing the right thing.
“But I thought our work rate today was immense, our fitness was brilliant, and togetherness as a group was fantastic. It's a credit to them, they deserve it.
“That's why you play sport and that's why you enter these competitions,” Flynn added.
“You want to progress, see how far you can get as a group, and hopefully you get a bit of luck along the way as well.”
Celtic’s reward is a place in the third round alongside some of the biggest clubs in the country like Shamrock Rovers, Bohemians, and St Patrick’s Athletic.
The club will prepare like they always do, while competing domestically in Mayo and keeping one eye on their upcoming FAI Junior Cup last-16 tie.
Right now, it is the end of July and the possibilities are endless, and the Douglas Hall result showed that on Saturday afternoon in Cork.
