Cookstown Pushed Hard By Augher

Saturday 20.09.2025

Championship Football

The first of the Connolly’s of Moy Junior Championship quarter finals took place on Friday night in Healy Park. The game between league winners Cookstown Fr Rocks and Augher St Macartans was expected to produce a comfortable victory for the light blues.

The game appeared to be going to form during the opening half as a very pacy and incisive Cookstown side created chance after chance and reached the break leading 2-9 to 0-5. Augher looked all at sea for periods but could have been closer had Jarlath Mc Namee converted a goal scoring chance straight from the throw in. As often happens in such cases the side that misses such a chance usually pays and within two minutes Cookstown had the ball in the Augher net. Michael Mc Elhatton found Nathan Connolly in space on the edge of the square and he flicked the ball to the net.

For the rest of the half Cookstown dominated the game and scored at will. Matthew Mc Neill added a second goal and there were points from Niall Mc Murray, Karol Mc Guigan, Matthew Carberry and Mc Elhatton as the league champions built up a substantial 2-9 to 0-5 lead.

Augher worked hard to stay in the game with points from Decky Connolly, Ronan Mc Elroy, a two pointer from Darragh Kavanagh and a Finbarr Mc Elroy effort just before half time. They looked under serious pressure but came out for the second half like a team possessed.

An early goal from Decky Connolly gave Augher hope. Conall Sheehy and Mc Elhatton landed points for the favourites but back came Augher again. Their second goal from the hard working Jarlath Mc Namee and suddenly the gap was down to six. A brace of Eamon Kavanagh points reduced the deficit to two and for a short while Cookstown looked rattled.

Unfortunately for Augher they ran out of steam just when they needed an injection of pace and points from Michael Mc Elhatton, Conal Sheehy, Karol Wawrynkiewicz, Nathan Connolly and Matthew Carberry allowed Cookstown to pull away at the end on a score line of 3-18 to 2-11.