Six see red at Kilberry

 Trim 1-14

Kilmainhamwood 0-12

SIX players were sent off, five of them following a vicious melee, as this SFC game ended in chaos at Kilberry on Saturday evening.

Trim got their championship campaign off to the expected winning start and Kilmainhamwood lost further ground in their ongoing battle for survival, but nobody was discussing the result after Syddan referee John Farrelly sounded the final whistle.

All hell broke loose in front of the dug-out four minutes from the end of normal time after Kilmainhamwood's Colm Gilcreest had fouled Darren Fay whose brother Aaron decided to get involved.

What followed was disgraceful and when calm was restored Farrelly brandished straight red cards to both Fays and the 'Wood's Philip Moran and Liam Shankey.

Trim's Ronan Fitzsimons, who appeared to be wrongly booked a short time earlier, was also dismissed after receiving a second yellow card and the town side were down to 11 players three minutes into injury-time when Stephen Farrell was booked for a second time and Farrelly flashed red again.

Some of Farrelly's decisions during the course of the game were puzzling, but there's nothing a referee can do when he's confronted with the sort of behaviour that marred the end of a match that had been relatively incident-free up to that stage.

The man who positioned himself on top of the dug-out recording the action is in possession of some disturbing images and the end product of his evening's work should be kept out of the reach of children or those of a nervous disposition! It certainly won't make nice viewing.

As for the game itself, Trim won with something of a struggle against a Kilmainhamwood team that stepped up considerably performance-wise on their showing against Donaghmore / Ashbourne six days earlier, even in the absence of the suspended Ray Magee.

They appeared to have a real chance to pull off a shock victory when they opened up a wind-assisted 0-9 to 0-5 interval lead, but despite the breeze slackening for the second-half Trim always looked likely to win once Alan Douglas scored their goal six minutes into the period.

The display of Kilmainhamwood's Ken Russell was a feature of the opening half as he kicked four points from play, two of them superb efforts, while Paddy Carolan also aided their cause considerably with a couple of tremendous scores.

Paul Gilsenan, who top-scored with eight points, got four of Trim's first-half scores, three of them from frees, but the reds might have added three goals in that period as Eoin McGrath, Neil Heffernan and Mickey Lowther all had chances which weren't taken.

Russell, who was the victim of a nasty blow to the back from an opponent after 29 minutes, wasn't as effective in the second-half when Kilmainhamwood's only scores were three pointed frees from Stephen Kiernan who notched 0-6 from placed balls overall.

With Darren Fay a towering presence in defence and Fitzsimons, Frankie Murphy and Ciaran Joyce imposing themselves more on the game, Trim steadily got on top and after Joyce and Gilsenan had pointed, Heffernan supplied the ammunition for Douglas to palm to the net and give them the lead at 1-7 to 0-9.

Kiernan drew Kilmainhamwood level, but Trim outscored them by 0-7 to 0-2 subsequently to win comfortably if not impressively.

However, it was that melee which generated all the talking points afterwards and which will undoubtedly continue to do so for some time.

SCORERS

Trim - P Gilsenan 0-8, five frees; A Douglas 1-1; M Lowther 0-2; C Joyce 0-1; D Fay 0-1; E McGrath 0-1. Kilmainhamwood - S Kiernan 0-6, all frees; K Russell 0-4; P Carolan 0-2.

THE TEAMS

Trim - B Murphy; P Flanagan, D Fay, D Hegarty; S Farrell, R Fitzsimons, C Delargy; S Kennedy, F Murphy; P Gilsenan, C Joyce, M Lowther; A Douglas, E McGrath, N Heffernan. Sub - A Fay for Flanagan, half-time.

Kilmainhamwood - M Kiernan; E Clarke, S Smith, S Mulligan; K Shankey, R Madden, P Barker; A Farrelly, K Russell; P Owens, F Owens, C Gilcreest; P Carolan, L Shankey, S Kiernan. Subs - P Moran for Clarke, 39 mins; H Corbally for P Owens, 51m.

REFEREE

John Farrelly (Syddan).