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There is an old cliché that soccer is a game of two halves.
This was certainly the case when Castleknock travelled away to WFTA for their first league game. Despite the bright summer weather, Castleknock started very slowly and their poor start was punished by WFTA who scored a brace of early goals. At the back, Sebastian McMahon and David Jolley battled manfully to try and contain the WFTA strikers who physically seemed to be very superior to the Celtic defence. Despite that advantage, Alex Murphy was simply immense at the back and repelled a number of WFTA attacks to keep Castleknock in the game. Up front though, Castleknock started to look increasingly dangerous and once again the pace of Leon Girigan was causing problems and both Leon G and Patrick Balogun fought back to score two excellent goals. Ben Fleming provided width for Castleknock attacks and was unlucky not to release Leon for another opportunity with a deft chip which was just blocked by a WFTA defender.
At half time though, the score was 3-2 in favour of WFTA. Castleknock reorganised their defence with Aaron Lynch taking up an unaccustomed position there, with further changes in midfield and Thomas Balogun assuming a striking partnership with Leon.
Straight from the second half kickoff, Castleknock swept down the left flank and a beautiful passing movement resulted in an excellent finish from Thomas Balogun to level the scores. Gareth Healy was giving a masterclass in passing and Castleknock’s use of width was outstanding. Robert Lynch was now displaying an additional facet to his game from last season and his distribution from midfield was quite superb with a series of killer passes that carved open the WFTA defence time and time again. He was ably assisted by Bode and Castleknock were now dominating midfield. At the back, Aaron Lynch was a rock in defence and thanks to him, WFTA never looked like scoring again. Dylan Dwyer's intelligent, quick throwouts from goal allowed Castleknock to launch attacks from the back and Eoghan Kearney was now successfully getting the ball up to his wingers. Castleknock scored 4 more goals without reply in a rampant display.
All of the Balogun triplets, Sean, Patrick and Thomas scored a goal with special kudos to Thomas who scored his first ever hat-trick displaying great composure in the WFTA penalty area. As ever, Leon G scored another excellent goal also, and Castleknock ran out as 7-3 winners by the final whistle.
