Cookstown started brightly with the front three of Shaun Og Shields, Ciaran Devlin and James Bell linking well and causing the back line problems. Throughout the first half Devlin was doing well to hold the ball and bring the midfield of Jamie Kerrigan, Aaron Whitten and Tom Wilkinson into the game. Ciaran Devlin also went close with a well struck effort from outside the box that just went wide. Cookstown made the pressure pay off when Shaun Og Shields played a clever ball in behind and James Bell was quickest to react before driving a thunderous shot across the keeper into the far side netting.
After the goal, Cookstown became more confident and were trying to play out from the back more than they had been. This was working well along the back line of Jamie Barry, Luke Neeson, Peter McLean and Leon Martin and allowed the home side to control the rest of the half.
The second half saw Jamie Kerrigan really start to dictate the play and his link up play with Jamie Barry was causing problems for Ambassadors down the right hand side. Tom Wilkinson was playing an important role in breaking up any forward play from Ambassadors, protecting the back line and Ethan Gordon who barely had a shot to save in the Cookstown goal. Cookstown were getting into good areas and Jude Murphy, Aren Kudrenko, Chris Ward and Darragh McHugh were all introduced to add to the attack. Despite getting in to good crossing areas, the quality was missing on the night for Cookstown to add to their earlier goal despite James Bell hitting the crossbar late on.
Team: Ethan Gordon, Jamie Barry, Peter McLean (c), Luke Neeson, Leon Martin, Tom Wilkinson, Jamie Kerrigan, Aaron Whitten, Shaun Og Shieds, Ciaran Devlin, James Bell, Aren Kudrenko, Darragh McHugh, Jude Murphy, Chris Ward