Wee Whites give their all in matches

The first match was a struggle against very strong opponents, Ardoyne swarmed all over the Wee Whites from the word go and it took some outstanding defending from Michael Rocks combined with an excellent display between the sticks from Distillery keeper Xander Power to keep the scoreline scoreless at the first break.

The second period continued in much the same vein but again the Whites defence in which Ben Gilliland was excelling managed to keep Ardoyne at bay until the final few minutes when the deadlock was eventually broken when the opposition striker fired home from a tight angle. In the last minute of this fifteen minute period Michael Rocks showed it’s hard by name and hard by nature by putting his head in where it hurts while defending another Ardoyne attack, Michael got a nasty blow to the head for his troubles but in typical fashion just shook it off and played on.

Period three saw an improvement from The Whites and after Matthew Moore had pulled a goal back they had their best spell with the hard working Kenzie Bradley and Calum Ashby both unlucky not to get their names on the scoresheet.

A sobering experience for the boys and hopefully something they will learn from. Game two was a different affair altogether but although Distillery started strongly the first chance fell to Ardoyne and goalkeeper Lewis Doyle needed to be quick off his line to thwart the danger. The U-9s then took control and Jake Donaghy opened the scoring finishing well after taking up a good position on the edge of the box.

Bradley Ingram’s surging runs down the right were causing mayhem in the Ardoyne rearguard and the end product of a couple of these runs were goals for Conall Cunningham and Jonathan McCullough. The start of the second period saw Ardoyne showing what a good team they are by pulling a couple of goals back and the abiding memory of this section of the game was the marvellous tussle Bradley and the opposition number five were having with no quarter asked or given. Spencer Maxwell was extremely unlucky on a number of occasions not to get the goal his play deserved.

Goalkeeper Lewis Doyle’s pinpoint distribution to the Distillery widemen was constantly putting the boys on the front foot and it was no surprise to see Ross White fouled in a dangerous postion as a direct result of one of these superb balls, the resulting Jake Donaghy free-kick was heading for the top corner only to be tipped over the bar by a defender on the goal-line which led to a penalty, Jake made no mistake smashing home the spot kick off the underside of the bar. Centre Forward Ross White earned another free-kick after taking a flying boot in the face and recovered to see his pile-driver hit the post. The tricky Ardoyne forwards were still extremely dangerous on the break but Noah Kelly and Ben Coulter were magnificent in defence and were a more than a match for anything the North Belfast boys could throw at them.