Enniskillen Santos 1 Magheraveely 6 Magheraveely pulled eight points clear of the relegation zone with a 6-1 victory over Enniskillen Santos, but the defeat for Santos has plunged them deeper into relegation trouble.

The Enniskillen side are now in danger of falling into the bottom two after their winless run in the league stretched to 12 games, and with only four games remaining to save their season manager Joe Keenan admits they face a fight to retain their spot in division one.

“It’s going to be a hard four games and we will be doing well to stay up,” said the Santos boss.

“None of our four games are easy but we will just have to face them and see what happens.

“Magheraveely was a big game and a big test and we failed it badly. Kesh three weeks ago was a big test and we failed it badly.

“We are really lacking in confidence at the moment.”

Santos’ hopes of securing a vital victory were dented before kick off by the late withdrawal of several players, and they failed to match the energy of their opponents in the latter stages of the match.

“Four boys let us down on Saturday morning and we finished up with just 11 players. When you are playing a team like Magheraveely who are hungry for the whole 90 minutes then you are up against it,” said Joe.

“The first five or ten minutes in the second half we started to lose our way badly and we fell apart in the last half hour. We tired as the game went on and they were bringing on fresh legs and fresh hunger and we were only good enough for maybe an hour.

“Effort and hunger wise they had that passion that we didn’t have. We didn’t give up, but we just fell apart. When you have hunger and passion you won’t go far wrong, and we didn’t have it.”

In contrast Magheraveely can start to think about another season in the top flight, but manager Richard Farrell is not taking anything for granted.

“I have told the players that there is no let up from here,” he said.

“We are gaining confidence with every good result but we don’t want to be thinking we are safe and letting off the pedal.

“We have five games to finish off the season and we have a very good chance of taking a result from each of them, and that is the target.

“Not to discuss how many points we need to be safe but to look at how many we can get,” he commented.

He believes the victory against Santos was well deserved.

“It was a very important win. We could have been well ahead in the first half but we couldn’t finish. We felt in control bar the first 15 minutes.

“Santos had a couple of early efforts but after that we took control and every time we went forward we were creating chances and looking very dangerous, although it didn’t happen for us until the second half.

“It’s nice to get two wins in a row,” he added.

It was the home side though who started the brighter and this was almost rewarded with an early goal but Christopher Keenan’s shot came back off the post.

Magheraveely then started to gain the upper hand and Gregory Johnston opened the scoring after good work by Warren Stewart down the left wing.

Santos however hit back shortly after when Seamie Quigley headed home a Richard Johnston free kick to make it 1-1.

Magheraveely had numerous chances to retake the lead in the first half but it was not until after the half time interval that they started to pull clear.

Gary Elliott put them ahead ten minutes into the second half before Ashley McFarland scored his first goal for the club after Warren Stewart had set him up.

Magheraveely dominated proceedings over the remainder of the game and Joseph Williamson made it 4-1 after he tucked away a pass from Paul Elliott. Mark O’Reilly made it 5-1 after a linking with Sean Mullaney and Joseph Williamson rounded off a comprehensive win.