North Down travelled to Dublin on Saturday to play Clontarf in the first round of the Irish Trophy and returned disappointed following a 2-1 defeat. North Down were without 4 regulars but those that were called up gave 100% enhancing their reputations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jonny Linter was playing dangerous balls into the circle but unfortunately the forwards were unable to take advantage. Clontarf took control of the game with 2 quick goals before the end of the first quarter. The first came from a short corner awarded for feet.Cunningham made a fine save but a Clontarf player found space to hammer the ball into the net. Minutes later a long up and over found the winger unmarked in the circle and he controlled the ball and smashed into the roof of the net.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All the goalmouth action in the second period belonged to North Down but Clontarf were dangerous on the break. Tweedie won a corner but Gilmore\u2019s effort was saved and the rebound cleared. A scrambled effort was then cleared of the line.North Down won another corner but this was cleared<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was little goalmouth action in the third quarter.Clontarf were content to hold onto their lead restricting North Down to scraps. Blair cut out a clearance and attacked the circle before unleashing a reverse wide. Gilmore broke through but a defender was able to deflect his effort over the bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the final quarter North pushed players forward in an effort to reduce the arrears but it was Clontarf who won a corner which was well dealt with by Cunningham. Welsh made a strong run into the circle.He made space but his weak shot was easily cleared. Scott Irwin got into a good position but in a scramble the keeper made a clearanceJust before the final whistle Gilmore got a consolation goal when he hit home from mid circle<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A disappointing result but hopefully this will prove a wake-up call for the League which begins next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Burch Autos man of match Jonny Linter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Down travelled to Dublin on Saturday to play Clontarf in the first round of the Irish Trophy and returned disappointed following a 2-1 defeat. North Down were without 4 regulars but those that were called up gave 100% enhancing their reputations. Jonny Linter was playing dangerous balls into the circle but unfortunately the forwards…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-match-reports","category-mens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16657,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656\/revisions\/16657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}