Colinvalley 2- 0 New Santos
31/03/07 - Poleglass

New Santos Scorers -
Star Player - Hugh Dougal

GK: JP Byrne
DL: Michael Mason
DR: Niall Cluskey
DC: Ronan Doherty
DC: Hugh Dougal
ML: Martin Magee 
MR: Paul Burns(David Dougan)
MC: Johnny Magill
MC: Kieran Seaward
SC: Anthony McGreevy (Simon Magee)
SC: Joe Franklin (John Martin)

On a day that signaled the start of the Spring weather, New Santos turned up confident after battering St Lukes 5-0 the week before.  The Colinvalley pitch was to prove a factor in the match being much bigger than Santos' home pitch at Strangford, and combined with the blistering heat, Santos' players knew that they were going to be in for a difficult day. 

Santos got off to a poor start, and failed to pose any sort of attacking thread in the opening stages.  Colinvalley were making full use of the pitch and played some quality football which Santos couldn't cope with.  They created a few good chances early on, but were unable to make any of them count.  Santos near took an undeserved lead when the front pairing of Joe Franklin and Anthony McGreevy linked well when McGreevy headed just over from Franklins pin-point cross.  The miss was to prove costly as Colinvalley maintained their dominance and converted it into a goal around the half hour mark when the Santos defence was caught in no-mans land, and their striker was able to finish off a relatively easy chance.  Santos heads seemed to have dropped after the goal, and they were punished for it when a rare mistake from JP Byrne in goal gifted Colinvalley a second when he seemed to catch the ball then drop it back into his own goal.

The half-time team talk wasn't a pleasant one from manager Ronan Doherty, and members of the team had strong words for one another.  It was said that the team needed to work harder, to use the ball in a much wiser fashion.

The team-talk seemed to work and Santos' came out fighting in the second half, looking much sharper than in the first half.  However, despite the improvement, Santos still failed to create anything of note.  Colinvalley seemed to take their foot of the pedal as well, as the heat and large pitch caught up on both teams resulting in the game beginning to stagnate.  Santos tried to re-ignite their attack and made 3 substitutions in quick succession in order to try and salvage something from the game with around 15 minutes remaining.  It nearly worked, as fit again sub Simon Magee raced onto a through ball and tumbled under a challenge inside the box, however, the referee deemed it a fair challenge and Santos were denied their penalty appeal.  It was Santos' last chance of the game although they were unlucky not to go 3 down in the dying minutes as Colinvalley missed a couple of guilt-edged opportunities, although they would certainly settle for the final score of 2-0.

The defeat provided a wake-up call to Santos, who know that they must improve massively if they are to beat league leaders Westrock next week and consolidate their position in the division.