Our senior B team welcomed neighbours Rathnew to Whitegates this afternoon and the lads came away with their first win of the season with a brilliant 3-2 victory. Both teams started well and had their chances before Cormac Doyle bagged his second in two games after a mistake in the Rathnew defence. Rathnew equalised on the half hour mark before Rovers went ahead again five minutes later from a Charlie Czwalina penalty after Sam Brown was fouled in the box. Rathnew equalised again on the stroke of half time to leave it level 2-2 at the break in a highly entertaining half.

Again in the second half, both teams had their chances but couldn’t find a breakthrough. Unfortunately for Rovers, they lost Charlie Czwalina to a nasty ankle injury with 25 minutes gone in the second period and there was a delay in proceedings until an ambulance arrived. We wish Charlie the very best and hope to see him back on the pitch soon as he was superb in defence today. Get well soon Charlie.

When play restarted Rovers won a corner and a brilliant delivery from Sam Brown was met by Jordan Sinnott to put Rovers 3-2 ahead. Rathnew showed their class and pushed and pushed for an equaliser and thought they had it when they were awarded a penalty for a handball but luckily for Rovers the resulting spotkick went wide of the post.

A brilliant performance from this young team who in the last two weeks have shown great bottle to come away with two big results. Ben Doyle, Cillian McAllister and Jordan Sinnott were brilliant throughout in what was a good all round team performance. Big thanks to Rathnew for playing their part in a highly entertaining encounter.