Win keeps us in with a chance - Letterbarrow’s Gerard McBrearty

Letterbarrow eked out a win over Drumoghill on Sunday and the result sees them still in with a chance of promotion, albeit they will need to be targeting close to maximum points from their remaining five games.

The club are celebrating their 50th year in the Donegal League and for joint manager, Gerard McBrearty, there was a great deal of satisfaction in the win over Drumoghill, especially as they were short half their starting team. The game was decided in a hectic spell at the very start of the second half when all three goals were scored.

“It was a funny sort of game, it was very quiet in the first half and then it sprung to life in the second half.  I suppose we were missing a few players today especially in the centre of defence where we would normally have Kevin McBrearty, John Kenny and Barry Burke and our joint captain Dillon McGroary was working and only arrived at half-time. We had a makeshift defence with Des McGroarty and Declan Gallagher but they did very well.”

Both sides had a couple of half-chances in the opening half before Daniel Meehan hit a screamer that McBrearty felt would have been the goal of the season had it gone in.

“At half-time you couldn’t really say much to them because they had done everything asked of them in the first half.”

Less than two minutes after the re-start Daniel Meehan slid in to fire home a cross but almost immediately the Letterbarrow defence coughed up possession and handed Drumoghill an equaliser.

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Darragh Burke did really well to put Letterbarrow back in front but again it looked as if they were going to be pegged back when referee John Duffy pointed to the spot after an innocuous enough looking incident involving ‘keeper Cathal Charlton. The goalkeeper, however, saved the spot kick and from there to the end the home side were dominant and should have added to their tally.

“I’m delighted overall,” said McBrearty. “Me and Chris (Christopher Burke, joint manager), if you said we’d get a point, we would have taken it. But we got the three points and we probably deserved it,” said McBrearty, who felt the penalty was a harsh call. But he also felt they got a little carried away about it on the line.

“Cathal (Charlton) went to catch it but then he dropped it and he must have shouldered into your man to give a penalty. It was very soft, I thought, but he did pull off a good save.

“We had three or four clear-cut chances for Christian Ward and Rory Kennedy and we had one or two borderline offside decisions. But overall I thought the boys worked really hard.

“The win puts us back in the mix. It looks as if Raphoe are going to win the league; they’re not going to get caught. And then there’s the fight for the next two slots and there’s probably five teams in that fight. We will go to the end and see what we get,” said McBrearty, who said that they had a two week break now and it might help get some bodies back.

The player manager said it was a big year for the club, being the 50th anniversary, and it was fantastic for such a rural club to keep going.

“It’s not easy getting players and then St Naul’s will be starting back soon. But we have around 20 lads there and they’ve given a great effort to me and Chris all year. And hopefully they’ll stick at it for the next couple of weeks.

Those coming weeks will be busy for McBrearty as well as he will be part of the Donegal Masters GAA team who travel to Philadelphia for five days on the weekend after St Patrick’s Day.