Athlone Town 1 Kilkenny City 1

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A second half goal from Jackie Mulcahy earned Kilkenny a share of the spoils in St. Mel's Park this evening in the new First Division Cup.

Town opened the scoring in the sixth minute with new signing Stephen Kelly making no mistake after the corner was well driven into the box. Athlone kept up the pressure and were all over Kilkenny for pretty much all of the opening 45 minutes. The other highlight of the first half was eccentric keeper Curran heading the ball clear.

The second half, Athlone were totally asleep. Luckily enough Kilkenny weren't particularly good either. A Kilkenny player was allowed waltz into the Town penalty area, forcing Curran to make a good save but Mulchay was on the end of the re-bound from close range in the 60th minute.

Alan Clarke replaced Eric Molloy late on, and Curran picked up some injury, didn't look too fit by the end. Conor was sorely missed in the centre of defense.

So all in all, a good enough start from Athlone. If they can play like they did in the opening 45 minutes, we will do OK. The young players do need to get the run outs in this cup though to get rid of any nerves.

And finally, the pitch was excellent given the recent weather. Nice enough sized crowd too. Hopefully it can only get better.

Athlone Town:Shane Curran, Chris Malone, Mickey Collisn, Ronan Frawley, Robert Shine, Damien Rushe, Henry Kelly, Adrian Carberry, Davy Dowling, Stephen Kelly, Eric Molloy.

Subs:Clarke for Molloy


A full report will follow soon, and the website should be back online either late tonight, or tomorrow afternoon.