Keadue Rovers are to protest their 2-1 loss against Kilmacrennan Celtic in yesterday’s area cup final due to an alleged ineligible player for Kilmacrennan.
Kilmacrennan Celtic retained the Brian McCormick title with a hard earned 2-1 victory over Keadue Rovers at the Letterkenny Community Centre yesterday.
But Keadue are today set to appeal the result, believing that Kilmacrennan fielded an ineligible player in the final.
They will claim that a player who featured for Kilmacrennan in yesterday’s game played for another team earlier in the competition.
Gary Whoriskey gave Kilmac an early lead, out-jumping Keadue ‘keeper Caolan Bonner to head home James Doherty’s high ball into the goal area in the 6th minute.
It was 2-0 in the 26th minute, a good build-up by the home team resulted in the ball reaching James Doherty in the Keadue box and he hammered a super angled drive into the top corner of the net.
Keadue gave themselves a lifeline in the 75th minute.
Substitute Oran Fallon, who impressed in he time he was on the pitch, worked a short corner with Mark Forker and his low dangerous cross was drilled home by Aidan McHugh to set up a tense last fifteen minutes.
Kilmacrennan Celtic saw out the five minutes of injury-time that was played to hold onto the Brian McCormick Area Cup and also move forward to the semi-finals of the overall competition.
Kilmacrennan last year were stripped of the 2019/20 Premier Division title after the Donegal League deemed that Kilmacrennan played a player they believed should have been serving a suspension in a 3-2 win over Cranford in August 2020.
The Ulster FAI upheld an appeal by Kilmacrennan against the decision of the Donegal League to dock three points from the Lurgysiders, which meant Cappry Rovers finished top of the league and were presented with the trophy.
After the FAI ruled in Cappry’s favour, Kilmacrennan took the matter to arbitration with Brian Murphy BL, an independent arbitrator, ruling that Kilmac’ used an ineligible player in their game against Cranford and, accordingly, pulled that the points be awarded to Cranford.
