Aghalee Village keep promotion hopes alive

Moira Albion 2 Aghalee Village 5

Aghalee Village F.C. improved their chances of promotion with a 5-2 away win against Moira Albion last week.

Aghalee got off to a great start when Steven Stewart found their leading goal scorer Davy Costello who lobbed the keeper in the second minute to give them the lead.

In the 12th minute Davy Costello put a through ball to Aidan Reilly who rifled his shot into the right hand corner for Aghalee’s second.

Micky Tohill went close for Aghalee shortly afterwards but his shot was well saved and a great run from Anto Diamond was halted by Moira’s defence. After this early setback Moira Albion began to settle and were rewarded on 27 minutes when Aghalee failed to clear and they pulled a goal back.

However, in the 42nd minute Davy Costello was fouled just outside the box and Conor Gaskin scored a tremendous direct free kick from 25 yards to give his team a 3-1 half time lead.

After the break, Moira came storming back and were denied by good defensive work from Paddy Reilly, Ryan McKenna and Anto Diamond.

However, on 67 minutes Moira broke through to reduce the arrears to 3-2.

It was a tense period for Aghalee who needed full points to have any chance of promotion and Paul Lenaghan fought hard in midfield to stop a confident Moira and Aghalee’s keeper Gerard Hartley pulled off some great saves to prevent the equaliser.

But on 85 minutes supersub Paddy Reddick came off the bench and latched onto a pass from Davy Costello to shoot from 20 yards and into the back of the net to ease the tension and give his team a 4-2 lead.

Then in injury time Aghalee’s Michael Connon fired in a shot which beat the Moira keeper but was saved by a Moira Defender with his hand and Davy Costello converted the resulting penalty for a 5-2 victory.

Aghalee Village were due to play their last match against 2nd placed Lurgan United on Saturday past, although victory would move them into second place, they were hoping for other results go their way.