{"id":8525,"date":"2018-03-12T15:13:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T15:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/northdownhc.co.uk\/?p=8525"},"modified":"2018-03-12T15:13:03","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T15:13:03","slug":"firsts-ease-through-against-raphoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/12\/firsts-ease-through-against-raphoe\/","title":{"rendered":"Firsts ease through against Raphoe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>North Down welcomed Raphoe to Comber in the Ulster Premier League hoping to gain revenge following the Irish Hockey Trophy defeat earlier this year.\u00a0 The home side started quickly and after two minutes took the lead.\u00a0 Sharp link up play between Andrew Boyd and Ross Linter resulted in the latter crossing for Josh Gilmore who showed great composure before twisting and scooping the ball past the helpless Raphoe keeper.<\/p>\n<p>To Raphoe\u2019s credit, they did not let their heads drop and caused the North Down defence some issues through well placed aerial balls.\u00a0 The away side equalised from a short corner.\u00a0 North Down failed to clear their lines from the initial effort and the rebound was tucked away.<\/p>\n<p>A firm half time team talk from player coach Gareth McKeown seemed to have the intended impact as North Down duly upped their game in the second half, dominating possession and with most of the play being confined to the Raphoe half.\u00a0 The home side regained the lead via a short corner with Philip Templeton hitting the backboard with a solidly executed drag flick.\u00a0 However, Raphoe once again responded, equalising from the penalty spot.<\/p>\n<p>Jonny Moore continued his scoring streak sliding in at the back post to tuck away a Gareth McKeown cross to restore the lead to 3-2.\u00a0 As the clock ticked away, North Down won a series of short corners and from one of which, Ross Linter hammered home to secure the points.\u00a0 Raphoe were reduced to ten men after their skipper was shown a red card for a combination of robust tackles and poor discipline with the final score finishing 4-2.<\/p>\n<p>This victory was North Down\u2019s third in a row and they will be hoping to carry the confidence gained into the remaining league matches to ensure a strong finish to the season.<\/p>\n<p>PMB Man of the Match: Mark Linter<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/northdownhc.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Copy-of-Mark-Linter-3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8526 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/northdownhc.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Copy-of-Mark-Linter-3-300x183.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"183\" srcset=\"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Copy-of-Mark-Linter-3-300x183.jpg 300w, https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Copy-of-Mark-Linter-3.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>North Down welcomed Raphoe to Comber in the Ulster Premier League hoping to gain revenge following the Irish Hockey Trophy defeat earlier this year.\u00a0 The home side started quickly and after two minutes took the lead.\u00a0 Sharp link up play between Andrew Boyd and Ross Linter resulted in the latter crossing for Josh Gilmore who&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8526,"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-8525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-match-reports","category-mens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8525","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/northdownhc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}