St Vincents v St Sylvesters, DSFC QF

St Vincents 0-20

St Sylvesters 0-7

St Vincents booked their place in the Dublin Senior Football Championship semi-final with a comfortable victory over St Sylvesters at Parnell Park on Friday night. The Malahide men stayed with their illustrious opponents early on, but Vincents stepped it up a gear midway through the first-half, and played some very good football, at times, thereafter.

The teams were level after seven minutes, with Diarmuid Connolly and Enda Varley, from a free, getting the scores for Vins, and Alex Wright and Gary Sweeney scoring for Syls. Sweeney’s effort was the pick of the lot, as he hit a long range effort from forty-five metres, which just landed over Michael Savage’s crossbar.

With eleven minutes on the clock, Vinnies were a point ahead, after fine efforts from play by Mossy Quinn, twice, and Varley once more. One of Quinn's points should have been a goal, after a sublime ball in from Connolly, but the former Dubs’ star dropped the ball at the crucial time, and failed to make proper contact with it.

Quinn scored the point of half to push the Marino men ahead in the sixteenth minute, as he curled over a monster effort from forty metres. And he put one over from a placed ball to push his side ahead by four, for the first time, as the half entered its final ten minutes.

And the lead would be eight by the break, after Ger Brennan got in on the act with a close range point, after another Mossy free, and then Shane Carthy and Cormac Diamond fired over long range efforts.

Diamond’s second from play opened the scoring in the second-half, and Quinn scored his fourth from play to push the gap to ten with fully twenty-seven minutes left in the game.

It took nearly ten minutes for another score, as Sweeney cancelled out Varley's close range effort.

Again the teams traded scores, through a Varley free, and an Alan Foy point from play, and as the game entered its final ten minutes, Vins' lead was still ten points. Naturally enough, the intensity of the game had dropped substantially by that stage.

A fine Vinnies attack with five minutes to go involving Eamonn Fennell and Connolly, left Mossy in space and he fired over from close range. Fennell scored one himself moments later, after being left in far too much space out right.

But in truth, it was nearly shooting practice for the defending champions by that stage, as they eased into the last four.