U10 Hurling– Roundwood Blitz
9 August, 2008
The latest round off U10 Hurling blitzes was held on Saturday in
Roundwood. Heavy overnight rain only stopped about an hour before
the games were due to begin and black clouds were ominous
everywhere. As a result only 6 diehard players turned up for the
day, which meant opposition teams had to loan us players in each
match to partially rectify the imbalance.
Regardless, we decided to play and we drew the short straw in
our first game and came up against a very good Glenealy team.
Midway through the first half Owen Duffy took an accidental hard
knock to the back of the leg and limped off for some treatment and
then had to resume at full forward due to lack of mobility. For the
second half, which is all in air hurling, he retired to the
goalkeeping position and was peppered in quick succession for 2
quick goals by fast soloing Glenealy forwards. With ego hurting and
temper rising he threw himself headlong at the next shot and
parried down an almost certain goal and followed up by rising
quickly from the ground to block down the follow up shot from the
forward. This was followed by several more terrific saves and now
with Evan Sweeney rising to the game out in the middle of the field
and hassling the rampaging opposition into shooting wildly and
forcing errors so that they remained scoreless from play for the
remainder of the match. Glenealy scored from a couple of well taken
frees to win out the match.
For the second match we came up against Roundwood who loaned us
2 players. This match ebbed and flowed and Kevin Nolan seemed to
pop up everywhere on the pitch to break up the opposition play.
Stephen Finn also produced the score of the game with a nice point
from on the run. Ryan Hannon manned the goals for most of this
match and efficiently cleared up balls and distributed his puck
outs very well. Mark Kenny was a constant treat in the forward line
and had some very near misses.
Our final match was against Kilcoole and at this stage our lads
were struggling with the constant running to cover the pitch. We
had two injuries in this game with Kevin getting an accidental bang
on the elbow from a teammate and Mark hurting his foot but both
hardy lads resumed quickly to give it everything.
On the day the results didn't go our way but the six lads put in
maximum effort and this was visible to all as they came off after
the final match with sweat soaked hair, flushed faces and tired
limbs. Many thanks also to all the parents that came along to
support and cheer on the lads. The team on the day was Owen Duffy,
Stephen Finn, Ryan Hannon, Mark Kenny, Kevin Nolan and Evan
Sweeney.
