F&W Division Three
Lisnarick 0
Enniskillen Galaxy 8
By Jonathan Hogan
ENNISKILLEN Galaxy romped to an emphatic 8-0 victory at bottom side Lisnarick on Saturday, with Dylan Warren marking his first start for the club’s first team by helping himself to four goals.
Galaxy were ahead inside five minutes and never looked back, something manager Damien Love felt set the tone on a tricky Lisnarick surface.
“The start was obviously important, getting that early goal,” said Love.
“I was delighted for the young cub [Dylan] Warren and Ryan [Willicombe] to get their hat-tricks, and we could’ve had more on the day, but for some missed chances and the pitch itself, which is a leveller.
“I told him [Warren] he’d get a hat-trick today and he said, ‘I hope so!’ So thankfully he didn’t make a liar of me.”
Warren, who signed from Fivemiletown ahead of the season, had been a regular for the reserves and was making only his second first-team involvement after coming off the bench at Omagh Town the previous week. He wasted little time making an impact.
The opener arrived in the fifth minute when Michael Dooris took the ball down neatly and slipped Warren through to finish well.
Four minutes later it was two, Ryan Willicombe lively down the right before going past his marker and delivering a cross that Warren met at the back post, nodding back across goal to wrong-foot the keeper.
Willicombe then got his reward, cutting inside off the right and firing hard and low into the bottom corner, before Lisnarick lost their goalkeeper to injury and it became largely one-way traffic.
“Fair play to Lisnarick, their heads never dropped and they put it up to us a bit the first 10 or 15 minutes of the second half, and it was only a brilliant strike from Michael [Dooris] that killed them,” explained Love.
That strike arrived after the restart and was the goal of the game, Dooris finding the top corner from 25 to 30 yards to make it 4-0.
The floodgates opened after that, with Galaxy’s right side causing constant problems.
Eoin Donnelly, Gerald Houston and Willicombe were torturing Lisnarick, with Warren completing his hat-trick before Willicombe added two more. Warren then rounded things off late on with Galaxy’s eighth.
Love was honest about the expectations on his side.
“You weren’t really winning on Saturday, you were expected to win and if you didn’t there’d be questions, but it is going in the right direction,” he said.
“Referee Michael Hynes had a good game too I must say, he was clued in for what it was.
“We’ve a couple of bigger tests coming up now in Drumquin and Dergview Reserves [in the Mulhern Cup] and I’m really looking forward to them.
“We’ll have a good few more boys available for them too.”
The result makes it three unbeaten for Galaxy and lifts them back above cross-town rivals Enniskillen Rovers, leaving Love’s side on the coattails of St Pat’s Castlederg and Maguiresbridge with four games remaining.
