The 10 minutes immediately after half time, often referred to as championship minutes were the crucial period in this game when we mined 2-02 to just two points in response, effectively killing off this game as a contest and ensuring our passage to round 2A.
The opening half saw us dominate around the middle through the excellent David Moran but a lack of support at crucial stages saw our efforts come to nought and our half time lead of 4 points, 1-07 to 0-06 could and should have been more.
The divisional outfit had started promisingly with the ever dangerous Conor Cox twice failing to open the scoring before Jack Savage from a free had the opening score and shortly afterwards a quick exchange between Tommy, Barry John and Gavin O’Brien saw the latter find the net to leave us 4 points to the good after as many minutes.
Cox had Feale’s opening score from a free and though Jack replied Cox was again on the score sheet shortly afterwards and both sides traded scores from here to the half time whistle with the pick of the scores coming from Moyvane cousins Martin and Shane Stack; even though we had the better of the exchanges around the middle, thanks to David’s strong showing, we often failed to find our inside men and were grateful to Ross O’Callaghan in the 25th minute when he smothered a shot close to goal which could otherwise have raised a green flag.
The game was just 3 minutes old in the second half when John Ferguson picked out Gavin O’Brien and offloading to the advancing David Moran we stretched our lead to 7 points when David fired home; a point from Jack was soon followed by a third goal from John ( Ferguson) following a good fetch and run by Gavin and suddenly we were 10 points to the good. The home side continued to probe however and reduced the deficit to 6 points with about 10 minutes left – we lifted the siege with scores from David and Barry John but were grateful to Gary Kissane who twice denied the opposition with good saves to see us advance by 8 points, 3-15 to 0-16.
The 2nd round draw has paired us with favourites Dr Crokes next weekend and we await confirmation of the fixture.
Team: Gary Kissane, Danny O’Sullivan, Ross O’Callaghan, Darragh McElligott, Cian Sayers, Ryan Carroll, Karl Mullins, David Moran ( 1-01), Con Barrett, Gavin O’Brien ( 1-0), Jack Savage ( 0-07, 6fs), Cormac Cofffey, Barry John Keane ( 0-01), Tommy Walsh ( 0-03), John Ferguson ( 1-02).
Subs: Shane Brosnan, John C O’Connor, Tom Hoare, Gearóid Savage ( 0-01), David Murphy & John Keane.
Thanks to Anna Marie who brought her camera!
