Derrygonnelly 2-15 Irvinestown 4-10 Derrygonnelly Harps dropped their first points of the season as they went down by a single point at home to Irvinestown on Sunday.

The Harps were without a host of regulars for the game and Irvinestown looked to be well on their way to securing the points when they led by six points, 4-10 to 2-10, with five minutes to go.

However, Derrygonnelly rallied and banged over five successive points to close to within one but they had left themselves just too much to do as the St. Molaise picked up their second win of the campaign.

“We were missing a few players but we have no complaints about the outcome ,” said Harps boss Martin Greene. “They were the hungrier side in the first half and it took a few of our lads time to get up to the speed of senior football but they improved in the second half although we were always chasing the game.”

Irvinestown were quickly out of the blocks and by the seventh minute they had opened up a 1-04 to 0-01 advantage over the home side.

James Duffy, who helped himself to a hat-trick of goals on the day, grabbed his first after only two minutes while Gary Maguire and Ronan Ormsby also landed free kicks.

Gary McKenna had opened the scoring in the first minute for Derrygonnelly and he was their chief source of scores during the contest.

With Maguire and Kevin McDonnell tagging on points, Irvinestown moved into a 1-06 to 0-03 lead but McKenna, Stephen McGullion and Aaron Burke hit back with three points in a row for Derrygonnelly although the away side registered the final score of the half to leave four in it at the break, 1-07 to 0-06.

Indeed, that advantage was further increased early in the second half as Ormsby converted a free before Duffy fired in his second goal of the game to make it 2-08 to 0-06.

McKenna again responded with frees for the Harps but Duffy rattled over a point from play before Maguire converted a penalty after a foul on Ormsby to make it 3-09 to 0-08.

This was start of a goal rush with Kevin Cassidy netting for Derrygonnelly straight away before Duffy completed his hat-trick a minute later only for the Harps to again quickly answer with a Leigh Jones goal.

However, when Stephen Sheridan knocked over a point for Irvinestown with 55 minutes gone it appeared that the they were home and hosed.

Derrygonnelly though piled on the pressure in the latter stages with Aidan Meehan and Burke firing over points as the Harps tagged on five on the trot.

It was not to be enough though as Irvinestown held on to clinch a hard earned one point win.