Three Rock Rovers and Pembroke made their opening statements of intent on Saturday, starting their bids for the Leinster League Division One title with strong opening wins.
The former won the Rathfarnham derby, seeing off near-neighbours Corinthian 4-2 with debutant Jonny Bruton and a late Jody Hosking cracker eventually sealing the win.
Pembroke, meanwhile, were forced to fight back from a half-time deficit to defeat YMCA. The Milltown club started well, though, as Jamie Tobin netted a smart counter-attack goal against the run of play, giving the Y a 1-0 half-time lead. Iain Walker was in inspired form between the posts to keep it that way while Alan Sothern missed a penalty stroke to add to Pembroke's frustrations. But Ronan Flannery finally got them back on terms with 18 minutes to go and it opened the floodgates.
Sothern got on the end of Mark Loughrey’s pass for 2-1 and Conor Harte’s drag-flick was deflected in by Maurice Elliott to close out the result.
Elsewhere, Railway Union also came from 1-0 down to win 3-1 as they saw off Fingal at Park Avenue. Rathgar’s first ever Division One game ended in a 2-0 defeat to Glenanne.
:quality(70)/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/irishtimes/1b7ea32f-c965-4b33-bcd9-921a4bb2fa63.png)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)