Club Notes: 16th October 2024

West Junior A Football Championship final,Shamrocks 3-10, Ballyduff 3-11.

Shamrocks bowed out of the Junior Football Championship by the closest of fine margins in Lismore last Sunday when they lost to Ballyduff in the Western final after a pulsating game marred by a serious injury to Ivan O’Neill. This is a bitter pill for Ivan who had to battle back from a similar injury only last year. He’s one of our best and most popular players who never leaves Shamrocks down, and we wish him a speedy recovery. 

Ballyduff were first to score which was matched by a fine point from Shane Roche before Ballyduff took the lead with a goal from a penalty.  Shamrocks bounced back with the next 2 points from Billy Hynes and Edward Lonergan. Ballyduff scored next which was matched by points from Tom Dalton and Adam Crawford to level the match again. The teams traded scores with points from Billy and Tom before Ballyduff got a well worked goal to go ahead again. But Shamrocks showed their resilience with a great move that resulted in Padraig Hynes being upended in the square and Shane buried the resultant penalty to tie the scores 1-7 to  2-4 at half time. 

We began the second half very well with points fromKieran Crawford and Tom Dalton, but we also scored 2 goals from John Paul Lucey and Eoghan Lenehan, and with 15 minutes to go we led by 2 goals. We started to get careless with some of our passing at that stage and this allowed Ballyduff back into the game and they struck back with  3 points in a row. Edward Lonerganhit over an excellent point to stop the slide, but the last 5 minutes was all Ballyduff and they finished the game off scoring a goal and 2 points to scrape over the line.Our cause wasn’t helped by the awful injury to Ivan O’Neill who had to be stretchered off with a serious knee injury which held up play for nearly 10 minutes. We did have a late free to bring the match to extra time, but it wasn’t an easy one for Tom, and though he had a great game and was successful in his earlier frees, this one was off target and Ballyduff held on for a narrow win. We wish Ballyduff well in the county final next weekend. For Shamrocks it’s the end of the road in this year’s championship, and we would like to thank Jimmy O’Neill,  Mike Neville, Peter Morrison and Ciaran O’Keeffe for their outstanding efforts. We also thank all our players for a serious effort and giving us a lot to cheer for this year.

Panel; Bernie Kelleher,  Mikey O Neill,  Ivan O’Neill, Stephen Roche,  Eoghan Lenehan (1-0), Shane Roche(1-1), Adam Crawford (0-1), Pádraig Hynes, Billy Hynes (0-2), Tom Dalton (0-3), Kieran Crawford (0-1),John Paul Lucey (1-0), Stevie Lucey, Edward Lonergan (0-2), Edward O’Neill, Liam Motherway, Ciarán Lenehan,  Kelvyn O Farrell, Michael Lucey,Ciarán Hunt, Cathal Hunt, Adam McSweeney,  Brian Harnedy, Alan Kelly, Tomás O’Neill.