Achill topple 'Castle to record important win
Achill’s Fionnbhar Gallagher marshalled the half-back superbly in the second half, keeping Ballycastle to a single point.
Achill have claimed their first victory of their 2024 championship campaign after defeating Ballycastle, thanks to a superb second half performance. It was a rematch of the Junior ‘B’ final from last year, in which Achill came out on top.
It was an extremely forgettable first half. Both teams will be disappointed with the sloppy football that was on display. The home side scored the first point of the game in just under one minute, through Sean Dever, but that was as exciting as it got. Both teams struggled to hold on to the ball, being turned over on almost every attack.
Achill were playing against a strong breeze, while Ballycastle implemented a long ball strategy to full-forward Conor Barrett. However, Barrett was being tightly marked by a strong Achill defence and was unable to control the ball being sent in to him.
With 22 minutes played, Achill got only the second score of the game after James Joyce raised the white flag from a free. Ballycastle got their first score of the game in the 24th minute, after a superb outside of the boot effort from Fionnan Caulfield. Achill were slowly growing into the game as half-time approached. Peter Gallagher kicked the final score of the opening half, to leave the scoreboard reading 0-3 to 0-1 in favour of the home side at the interval.
However, it was a tale of two halves. Achill started the second half with a new lease of life. With less than four minutes of the second half played, Achill had already kicked four points, which was more than their first half total. James Joyce, Sean Dever, Peter Gallagher and Brian Lavelle were the four who raised the white flag. Ballycastle responded with one of their own, through Ciaran McDonnell, before Achill raised the green flag, for the first time.
With 35 minutes on the clock, a handpass from Tiernan Cooney managed to split open the Ballycastle defence, and James Joyce found himself one-on-one with Jason O’Neill. O’Neill managed to get a foot to Joyces shot, but it was not enough to prevent the ball ending up in the back of the net.
This spurred the home side on, and five minutes later Brian Lavelle scored an excellent goal from the edge of the box as he hit it low and hard into the bottom right-corner.
The Achill defence stood strong, led by Fionnbhar Gallagher, only conceding one point to the North Mayo side in the final minutes, while the Clew Bay men kicked three excellent points. Substitutes Michael Sweeney and Eddie Doran both made an instant impact, kicking one each, while Peter Gallagher scored his third of the day, as Achill saw out the victory. All eyes now turn to the final round of fixtures, where Achill will need a victory against Eastern Gaels to have hope of progressing to the quarter-finals stage.
