Seventh heaven as Garvey Seconds take win in derby with South Antrim

Garvey dominated the opening exchanges but could not turn their possession of the ball into goals with Matthew Nelson and Mark Raphael coming close without finding the net.

It took until the 25th minute of the game for Garvey to ‘break the seal’ when Matthew Nelson scored with a well-placed penalty corner past South keeper Ian Glass and three minutes later the Seconds scored the goal of the match.

The ball was quickly transferred down the right before Ryan Getty was on hand at the left hand post to slot the ball into an empty net.

Garvey continued to batter the South goal but were off target with two more penalty corners and some fine saves from Glass contained the score-line to 2-0 at the interval.

A quick burst of action at the beginning of the second half saw Garvey pull away from their stubborn opponents; two goals from Matthew Nelson sealed the points for his team and another from Ryan Getty in the 45th minute gave Garvey a 5-0 margin with South struggling to keep up with an in-form side.

Nelson added a fourth individual goal in the 56th minute and Ryan Getty completed his hat-trick with Garvey’s 7th goal in the dying seconds of an impressive win for the Junior 1 league leaders.

They face South again next week at Friends School before squaring up to Cork Church of Ireland in the quarter final of the Irish Junior Cup a week later at Comber Road.

Garvey Thirds grabbed a vital league point in Junior 1 at Comber Road when they drew with a strong Annadale Seconds; the score was 2-2 with the 3rds slightly disappointed as they led by two goals to nil at the half way stage of a high quality match.

Andy O’Hare gave Garvey the lead after 10 minutes when the 3rds were well on top of their opponents and when Glen Halliday gave them a two goal margin, things were looking good for a Thirds team which has struggled to accumulate points this season.

Unfortunately, the second half saw the Annadale team come much more into the game and when they scored through a penalty corner early in the period, the Thirds began to weaken their resolve and it was no surprise when the visitors scored an equaliser after 55 minutes and it took some good defending by goalkeeper Frazer Carnduff and fellow defenders to keep Annadale at bay and come out with a hard fought point at the end of the 70 minutes.

Garvey 6ths also had a fine result in their match against Civil Service 3rds at Comber Road. They began strongly and took the lead with a goal from Josh Kidd and another from Aaron Milligan gave the 6ths a 2-0 lead at the interval.

Playing some open hockey the 6ths quickly pulled away from Civil Service with further strikes From Milligan, Richard McCracken and Johnny Cash to give Garvey a five goal advantage and even a late goal from the visitors could not tarnish a fine 5-1 win for 6ths which is climbing their Junior 5 league table from week to week.