Nemo Rangers Hold Off Fermoy's Late Surge After First-Half Dominance

Nemo Rangers 4-13 Fermoy 3-10

For half an hour in Glenville, this McCarthy Insurance PIFC tie looked like a training spin for Nemo Rangers. By the end, they were hanging on to a nine-point win and Fermoy were walking off wondering how on earth they left it so late to start playing.

At the break, Nemo led 3-12 to 0-3. Let that sink in. Fermoy managed just three points in 30 minutes while the city side sliced them open almost at will.

The tone was set almost immediately. Two minutes gone, Dylan O’Connor slipped Callum O’Neill through and the net shook. From the restart, Dave Calnan clipped over a point. Fermoy hadn’t settled; Nemo were already out the gate.

By the fourth minute, the gap was a chasm. Dara O’Sullivan buried Nemo’s second goal and the Trabeg men were 2-1 to no score in front, their movement sharp, their finishing ruthless.

Fermoy finally stirred. Shane Aherne opened their account, David Lardner added a free, but there was no sense of a contest. Jack Coogan and Jack Horgan pointed to reassert Nemo’s grip, and then disaster struck for Fermoy again.

A poor restart in the 10th minute was punished mercilessly. Nemo pounced, Conor O’Donovan fed O’Sullivan, and the forward rattled in his second goal. 3-3 to 0-2, and Fermoy were unravelling.

Martin Brennan kicked their third point after 14 minutes. That was it for the half. From there to the whistle, it was all Nemo.

O’Neill tagged on another score, and only a fine save from Dale Dawson denied Horgan a fourth green flag. O’Sullivan nudged the lead out further, O’Donovan landed two in a row, and Fermoy were chasing shadows.

Then came a party piece. With five minutes left in the half, Nemo goalkeeper Donagh O’Leary strode up to a long-range free and drilled over a two-pointer. Matthew Keenan added a point, and O’Leary repeated the trick with another two-point free to push Nemo into that enormous 3-12 to 0-3 interval lead.

Game over? It should have been. Fermoy had other ideas.

They reshaped during the break. Former Cork defender Tomás Clancy pushed higher, Shane Aherne drifted out around the middle and began to get his hands on ball. Arlen Aherne was sprung from the bench and immediately added bite and direction.

He opened the second-half scoring, but Nemo seemed to slam the door again when Coogan crashed in their fourth goal. O’Sullivan added a point on 37 minutes and that, incredibly, was Nemo’s final score of the night.

From there, it was all Fermoy.

The comeback started with a bang. Lardner found the net to jolt his side to life, then clipped over a point, then struck again for a second goal. After 42 minutes, the board read 4-13 to 2-6. Nemo still led comfortably, but the flow of the game had flipped.

Shane Aherne and Brennan added points as Fermoy poured forward, Clancy driving them on from deep and the middle third suddenly belonging to the men in green and gold. Fionn Lardner then nailed a two-pointer to inject even more energy into the chase.

Nemo, so slick and assured in the first half, were now clinging to what they had, their earlier fluency gone as Fermoy’s intensity rose.

The last act belonged to Arlen Aherne. With the final touch of the game, he crashed home Fermoy’s third goal. It trimmed the margin, not the result, but it summed up the transformation after the break.

Nemo advance, powered by that devastating first-half salvo and the scoring of O’Sullivan (2-2), O’Neill and Coogan with a goal and a point each, and O’Leary’s two booming two-point frees. Yet the second-half script belonged to Fermoy and to David Lardner’s 2-2, backed by Arlen Aherne’s 1-2 and the industry of the Aherne brothers and Brennan.

For Fermoy, the question will linger: if they had played with that second-half ferocity from the start, how different might this night in Glenville have been?