'A' Hurlers Break the Rock

The Junior ‘A’ hurlers were victorious against Blackrock on Friday evening (25th July) after playing steadily but within themselves. The relatively young team, with six under 21’s playing including two minors, had to overcome the expectations of victory to carve out a comfortable win. In doing so they produced some impressive hurling at times that included some very good scores and some elegant passages of combination hurling. It is always a good thing when a team wins whilst playing within themselves and this was the case on this occasion.

Blackrock had the first point, the only time that they led in the match. It took Brian Dillon’s some time to settle and it was not until the ninth minute that John Horgan leveled from a free. Full forward, Danny Murphy had the next point on the twelfth minutes and two more from John Horgan, the second after a sweet passing movement, had Dillons leading four points to two at the quarter mark. The physically strong Blackrock side had the next two points to tie up the match again. In the eighteenth minute Brian Dillons Dan “the man” Murphy caught along ball from Cian McCarthy and kept his composure to find room to shoot to the net.

Two further points from Blackrock reduced the lead to the minimum after twenty-one minutes. A John Horgan point and another from Dan “the man” after a pass from Martin Corbett restored the Dillons advantage to three. On the twenty seventh minute Martin Corbett was on hand to finish to the net from a shot by Thomas Larwence to put them firmly in the driving seat. Blackrock did not lie down though and had the next three points before Cian McCarthy scored a long range effort in injury time to leave the half time score at 2-7 to 0-9.

Cian repeated the act from the second half throw-in. There followed points from Thomas Lawrence, James Horgan and in between another from Cian McCarthy to put Dillons eight points in front ten minutes into the second half, and well in control of the match. From then to the end there were two further points from John Horgan, and points from Cian McCarthy, David White, and Thomas Lawrence. In the fifteenth minute of the half the diminutive Mark Buckley who had come on at half time and brought an invisible step ladder climbed high to field a defensive clearance, turn and put over a lovely point. The final score of 2-17 to 0-12 reflected the superiority of Brian Dillons without the team ever moving into top gear.

The full back line of Tommy Boland, Daragh Rodgers and Derek McDonnell were generally on top of their markers so that goalkeeper John O’Herlihy was seldom called into action but dealt effectively with what he had to. The half back line of Cillian Brosnan, Brian Barrett and Maurice Carey were assured in their play and Michael Colohan was whole hearted at midfield in the first half. A very pleasing aspect of the game was that there were eight scorers for Brian Dillons. This augurs well going forward as an over reliance on John Horgan frees was a weakness of the team in the past.

A repeat of the first round match against Nemo Rangers is next up, whenever it will be played.

Report courtesy of Noel Shannon