ACFL Division Two
Longstone 2-16 Rostrevor 3-13
ROSTREVOR manager Tom Franklin says his team suffered through a poor day against a difficult opponent on Friday night past.
They drew with a Longstone team who are second bottom in the Division Two table. The draw means that Rostrevor allowed An Ríocht and Bryansford to edge away in the promotion race.
Tom said: “We completely left the game behind us. We had 30 shots and converted a third of those. That is not going to do.
“Our conversion rate was quite good at the start of the league. But it has disintegrated over the last while.
“We created a lot of scoring opportunities, we have a lot of talent up front and a lot of guys who can do the scoring, but we failed to convert.”
The draw is perhaps more frustrating because it came against a team at the other end of the league. Longstone are struggling in the division. They have won one of their eight matches and are second from bottom.
Tom said: “Longstone was never going to be easy.
“They are not going to lie down. Miceal Magill is over them. I know Miceal well, and they are not going to fold.
“They have so few wins that every match for them is a championship match.”
Longstone were missing Conor Poland and Michael Ireland, and county man Finn McElroy was not available.
Yet Tom pointed out that the ’Stone did a good job of taking their chances.
“Longstone have a smaller field which suits their game better. It is a tight pitch which means you don’t have much room to manoeuvre.
“On their field, two pointers are a massive thing. You have guys like Matthew Cunningham who can kick scores from distance all day.
“The game looked like it was going to be a shootout. A small pitch, back and forward, lots of shooting opportunities.
“We were off target and we didn’t execute. There is no two ways about it.
“I said to Miceal afterwards that they should have probably won it.”
Longstone came into the game to play football and to make life hard for Rostrevor.
“They didn’t set up negatively,” Tom said.
“Their number 11 caused us a lot of trouble in the championship last year. He dropped very deep, got on a lot of balls and hurt us from there.”
Moving on from the drawn game, Tom is looking forward to the rest of the season.
There are reasons to be positive. They have a number of new players involved this year, and they have the potential to get better because of that.
Midfielder James Rice didn’t play last year because of injury but he is back in the team this season.
Eoin Murdock has recovered from a cruciate injury and is back playing at number six.
Callum Lagan transferred from the Loup to Rostrevor and is living in the area. He is a new player at centre half forward.
Finn Morgan-Longfield is only out of minors.
In the full story Tom goes on to explain why he thinks there are no stand out teams in AFCL Division Two.
