25 October, 2008
Bray played host to St Olafs and Ballinteer St Johns
in a 3 way hurling blitz recently. Both these teams had beaten us
earlier in the year with BSJ in particular giving us a severe
beating so we were using these games as a benchmark of our
improvements over the summer. The reports are from the green
team.
The first match against Olafs was an edgy affair as the Bray lads
were determined not to be beaten on this occasion. Bray opened the
scoring when Philip Redmond scored a nice 3pointer (over the bar
worth 3, under the bar worth 1 in U10 Go games) from on the run.
The match settled in to a midfield battle as the dominant defences
quickly despatched any ball played into the forward positions back
out again. Liam Carolan, Oisin Dougan and Mark Kenny were very
strong for Bray in these positions. Olafs got a skill point for a
bat down and added to this with a well-taken point from midfield.
Going into the last few minutes Bray were pressing hard to try and
at least draw and this persistence was awarded with a 65. Owen
Duffy who had spent his summer holidays practising frees and
sideline cuts stepped up and calmly dispatched the ball between the
posts to give Bray a 6-4 lead. Olafs made a final push and were
themselves awarded a 65 but their attempt just drifted to the right
and was signalled wide to the relief of the Bray lads. A hard
fought victory to the Bray lads.
The second game was against BSJ and Bray put in another hard
battling game against a very skilled opposition. This game was tit
for tat all the way as BSJ scored a 3 pointer, which was cancelled
out, by scores from Stephen Finn and skill points from Owen Duffy
and Philip Redmond. BSJ got their own skill point and again Bray
responded with an absolute bullet of a ground shot from Ronan
Browne from about 20 yards out which nearly tore the net off the
posts. Into the last couple of minutes the match was level when our
lads let their concentration slip and the BSJ forwards twice broke
inside our back line to poach scores. The final score was 6-4
against us but this was a massive improvement on our early season
form against this opposition.Many thanks to Richard Hourihan and
Harry Stephenson for refereeing on the day.
