Rd. 2 Junior Co. League Div. 5
Beale 2-6 The Rock 1-6
Friday night saw our brave senior C’s face the bitter elements out in Ballybunion. With wind and rain, nearing gale force across the pitch, we were lucky that 15 made it from the dressing room to the pitch. We started out with S. Begley in goals who performed very well, with some fine saves and cute kick outs. P.Galvin, P.(pop)Williams & T. McLoughlin with S. Power, A. Shanahan & Richie(Gold dust) Conway made up our back line. Centre field was C. O’Connell(capt) & D. Healy, our attack was steeped with a combination of youth & experience, P. McGannon, A. Duggan, D. Clifford with full forward line of D. Carroll(Jnr), D.(peck)Doyle and E. McMahon.
The conditions made it tough to play nice football, with the ball sometimes ending up behind you when you kicked it, such was the strength of the wind we were kicking into in the 1st half. 14 minutes had passed before Danny Carroll opened the scoring with a fine point from 30 yards against the wind under pressure from 3 defenders. It was the 1st of 5 points for Danny who is improving hand over fist and is surely a Kerry Minor in the making for next year. This was immediately followed by a superb save from Shane Begley at full stretch. 2 minutes later Beale scored the first of 2 very soft goals, in the space of 5 minutes, unfortunately from our point of view. They also scored a point in between. We answered back with 2 finely taken points from frees by Danny, 1 on his right leg and 1 on his left. Half time score Beale 2-01 to 3pts to the ‘Rockies’, and everything to play for.
Second half saw us start very well, dominating all over, with good performances by ‘gold dust’ Conway, Dara Healy who really made his presents felt, Declan Clifford, Paul McGannon, Macky and Pecker all shining through in the conditions. 35th minute Danny added another sublime point from play followed by a delightful piece of team work, which was stylishly slotted into the net by young Alan Duggan, who is improving with every game. We were level and in the driving seat now, but luck was not with us, hitting the cross bar twice was pecker and we also rattled the upright twice all in the space of 7 minutes. Ciaran O’Connell kicked the score of the match with a superb point from a side line ball 47 yards out, Maurice Fitz would have been proud of, to put us in front.
Injuries in the conditions were to play a big part of last 20 minutes, Richie ‘Drac’ Long and Garry Lynch came in for D.Clifford & P.McGannon in the 40th minute followed 2 minutes later with the introduction of Sean Hurley for Richie ‘Gold Dust’ (groin). We were fortunate to have the likes of Boris Ivanov, Oscar Kirby & ‘Jasper Ween’ Mean Machine O’Carroll on the bench. Beale tacked on the next 4 points, with more than a little help from “their frees where 3 could and should have been frees for the rock.
3 points down with 8 minutes to go, time for the impact sub, enter “the other young O’Carroll” Kevin for Alan Duggan. Immediately Kevin was stuck in the thick of things, with the ref having words with him straight away, even though Kevin was pleading his innocence! We held possession, pushing hard, looking for scores, with time running out, Tommy McLaughlin made a great length of the field run, picking out Antony Shanahan who spotted the oncoming Kevin O’Carroll, who made the Beale keeper pull out all the stops to deny the ‘Rockies’ a deserved draw at least, as the ref blew full time short.
There was plenty of positives to take from this much improved performance, and you could see the rise in fitness levels by all who played, thanks to the training of Seanie Power in particular, ably assisted by Kevin and Don Shanahan. We were missing 4 or 5 of our first 15 on the night, and we are lucky that we have a panel of 33 or 34 lads who are regularly training. We’ll continue Monday night @7pm and keep our chins up for our make or break game v Ballydonoghue in Connolly Park Friday night @7-30. Ian Carroll ( manager of club bar) informs me, that the Ballydonoghue Boys, are making it “A Jolly Boys Outing” for this trip to the Capital.