Dublin University Association Football Club (DUAFC) travelled to Sportslink, a few kilometers away from their home ground, Santry Avenue, to take on Mid Sutton today in their first Metropolitan Cup fixture. Visibly older than Trinity’s youthful outfit, Mid Sutton were awkward to play against from the beginning, throwing their weight around and making it difficult for Trinity to string passes together.
The first half was a non event. Neither team looked likely to score and seemed sluggish. Trinity might have had a penalty, but their appeals were waved away by the referee, though he was liberal with his use of yellow cards, handing out several bookings to both teams. Trinity looked in control of the game for most of the first half although Mid Sutton improved as the half went on. When the half time whistle went, the game was anyone’s.
The second half was tense. Trinity tested the Mid Sutton keeper a handful of times but didn’t create any concrete chances until the 77th minute when Niall Carruthers laid the ball off to Oisin Pennycook who smashed the ball into the top right hand corner.
After winning a free kick, Mid Sutton’s Andrew Nugent lost his head and received a straight red card for pushing Trinity’s Ronan Hanaphy in the neck. The game looked over at this point, but Mid Sutton managed to equalize courtesy of a dubious penalty awarded after Trinity’s Niall Cullen was deemed to have handled the ball in the box.
The game looked like it was heading for extra time until Pennycook managed to dispossess the Mid Sutton keeper who tripped him as he was about to slide the ball into the Mid Sutton net. The keeper received a red card and Hanaphy slotted home the penalty. A minute later Pennycook once against found himself in the box and stylishly lobbed the ball past the keeper. The game ended 3-1 to Trinity.
Speaking to The University Times after the game, DUAFC Manager, Richie Maguire, said: “We had five missing from the first team today. The whole thing is to get out of here with a win and we did that.”
“It was a scrappy game, bad wind, bad pitch. The pitch is actually under the legal limit… we didn’t make it easy for ourselves but we got out”, Maguire added.
Today wasn’t an easy match for Trinity and for most of the game it could have gone either way. They have shown they can dig deep and scrape wins against awkward opponents, making this win more impressive in some ways than some of the bigger scores they have been putting up against teams in recent matches.
