1 November, 2008
On the weekend before the Bank Holiday we met at Old Conna on a
cold, windy morning for an away match to Faugh's. We had plenty of
wind and a little bit of rain, but great support all the same.
Neil took the White team and lined them up as follows: Aaron
Lyons in goals, after his man of the match performance last week.
In the backs were Jimmy Mason, Adam Barry and Ryan Purdy. In the
middle we had Ronan Browne and Oscar DeBurca, and up front we had
Conan O'Duill and the battling Kevin Nolan and Kevin
Spaine.
We started off the first half with a slight wind behind us but
found out very quickly we were up against some tough competition
throughout all their positions. Within 4 minutes they got their
first score. We fought back immediately with Oscar connecting up
with the two Kevin's who were in great attacking form again, but
unfortunately their defence cleared our first attack. Ronan and
Jimmy combined well during Faugh's next attach, and succeeded in
clearing the ball down the centre, but Faugh were able to shoot,
but it went wide. Ryan and Oscar were doing a lot of great work in
defence to keep Faughs from scoring. Our next attack came from
another great puck-out from Aaron, all the way up to the forwards,
but again Faugh's defence proved too strong, and got the ball to
their forwards who managed to score again. Then for the second week
in a row Ronan scored another skill point from a great block down
in defence.
Ryan continued his good work in defence and cleared a ball wide
where Conan fought for and won the ball driving it up to Kevin S.
who was helped out by Kevin N. but unfortunately they were closed
down again. The right hand side was seeing a lot of action, and
Adam was doing his best against all the attacks coming down that
side. Aaron was doing well in goal, and Jimmy was fighting hard in
front of him trying to protect our goal. After 10 min the game went
to air hurling and Conan was leading the pack in pick-ups and
striking in the air. Ronan continued his good work in defence with
another tap down scored another skill point, his second of the
game. With our defence seeing a lot of the ball, Jimmy and Ronan
were seeing a lot of the ball, with Adam showing how to clear out
wide to the wings. At the end of the 1st half there
was a goal line scramble where the Bray backs were putting their
bodies on the line, so much so that the goals managed to fall
backwards. With that the half time whistle blew.
We tried some positional changes in the second half, with Ronan
moving up front, Conan into the middle and Oscar into the backs.
Faugh's scored early, after our backs were slow to mark-up, I think
all the first half pressure was beginning to show. We had a few
chances at the start of the second half, with Aaron's long
clearances setting up Ronan and Kevin S. but unfortunately both
shooting wide with our first two chances. Faugh's next break again
caught our defence stretched after chasing the game and they scored
on that attack and on their next three, putting the game out of
reach. Conan was dong great in mid field picking up and trying to
strike the ball about 10 times. The team continued to show great
spirit and fight, starting with Aaron on goals, Jimmy, Ryan and
Adam in defence, Ronan and Conan picking up and clearing the ball
in the middle with Oscar and the two Kevin's giving it everything
up front. Well-done lads. Man of the match on this pitch was
Conan.
On the green pitch the game was hampered for both sides by the
heavy pitch and ground clearances weren't travelling very far. The
1st and 3rd quarters are ground
hurling and the conditions turned them into a frustrating time for
both sets of players with little progress made by either team. The
2nd and 4th quarters were
air-hurling and this was when most of the action took place. Faughs
had the better of the opening half and took their few scoring
opportunities whereas our opportunities dropped short or went
agonizingly wide.
Bray came out for the second half and immediately upped their
performance and went chasing the match. Tackles were put in and
opposition players closed down quickly and we started to take our
scores and to close the gap. Bray also clocked up a huge 8 skill
points (for bat downs) throughout this half. This pitch had the
unusual configuration of one adult goalpost and one juvenile post.
We had the benefit of shooting into the larger posts in the first
half but we didn't take our scores. The final outcome in this match
swung on 2 frees to each team in the second half. Faughs had two
frees into the larger goals and scored both (6 points as over the
bar is worth three points). Bray's frees were into the smaller
goals and with a strong crosswind blowing off the motorway our
first free drifted just right of the posts. To compensate we lined
up our second slightly left but the ball flew true and drifted just
wide of the left post - a possible six points missed. Final score
was 24-15 to Faughs. If only the posts were reversed for those
frees - c'est la vie !!
No individual man of the match on this pitch as the whole team
put in a phenomenal second half with every player either scoring
from play or scoring a skill point. This team has made huge
improvements since some of our early year heavy defeats and is now
becoming very competitive with each match - well done lads for all
your effort. The team this week was Mark Kenny, Ryan Hannon, Liam
Carolan, Owen Duffy, Fintan O'Shea, Philip Redmond, Stephen Finn,
Ben Hoskin and Oisin Dougan.
