Glentoran 20s today played Warrenpoint in the reverse of our first team fixture at The Oval.
We travelled to South Down with a very young side with Captain Eddie Shaw the elder statesman of the team at 18!
We were met with an experienced Warrenpoint side using their full quota of 5 over 20s and knew the young lads would be in for a tough afternoon.
The tough job got even harder when we lost Paul O'Neill to a red card on 20 minutes and faced playing over two thirds of the game with ten men.
To their immense credit the young players stuck to their task and remained extremely well organised and ran themselves into the ground to come away with a deserved share of the spoils with a battling 0-0 draw.
A great lesson for the young lads in how to manage a game.
The u20s now look ahead to playing Sirocco in the Steel and Sons Cup next Saturday.
Team:
Paul McLaughlin, Mal Smith, Kai Wardlow, James McCarthy, Padraig Hughes, Eddie Shaw (c), Mark Lowe, Daryl McKenna, Jack Henderson, Paul O'Neill, Pablo Andrade
Subs: Christopher Conn (for Henderson 55), Craig Baird (for McKenna 60), Alex Lalor (for Andrade 65)
Not used - Eoin Lundy