Lisbellaw United 11 Artigarvan 0

Lisbellaw United had no problem in brushing off the challenge of Artigarvan and sealing their spot in the next round of the Junior Cup with a comprehensive victory at Drumad on Saturday.

The ‘Law hit the net seven times in the first half an went on to add another four in the second half on a comfortable afternoon for Kyle McCleery’s charges.

“You never know in the junior Cup what sort of team you are going to face,” said McCleery. “They only started their league last week but they won their first game 5-0.

“We started well though and we never looked back. We were in complete control of things from start to finish and if I’m being honest, if we had taken our chances we could have scored twice as many,” he said.

Lisbellaw came flying out of the block and they were quickly off the mark as Paul McGrath put away a Davy Little cross.

McGrath was to go on and complete a first half hat-trick before being withdrawn by McCleery while Niall Keenan helped himself to a first half brace.

With Paul Elliott and Little also finding the net in the opening 45 minutes it was all over bar the shouting at half time with Lisbellaw seven goals to the good.

McCleery took the opportunity to run his bench at half time as he made three changes but the home side continued to dominate matters with one of the replacement, Adam McKenna, bagging number eight as he swept home at the back post.

Ryan Lindsay then made it 9-0 before a late double from Sam Lindsay rounded off a very comfortable day for the home outfit.

McCleery was not about to read too much into the game but he did feel that his side had played well on the day, albeit against a poor opposition.

“You can only beat what is put in front of you and we did that. They were a weak enough outfit but I do think that we played well and the boys were up for it from the off.

“I had spoken to them before the game about us needed to get through and we did that. We looked sharp and hungry and the work rate was phenomenal so I can’t ask for much more than that,” he commented.

With this coming Saturday set aside for the remainder of the Junior Cup fixtures, Lisbellaw have a free week and McCleery is hoping then that they can kick on when the league action returns.

“I think we can draw confidence out of Saturday’s game and hopefully now we can kick on and gather momentum.

“We had 13 positive Covid cases in the first few weeks of the season but we were closer to full strength on Saturday and hopefully we can stay that way now,” said McCleery.