Carrig Under-16 Hurlers Taste All-Ireland Success
U-16 All Ireland Hurling Blitz 2009.
Carrigaline U16 hurlers tasted All-Ireland ‘B’ glory on Saturday last with a stunning display of team hurling in this Blitz tournament run annually in Carlow Town. After a slow start to the year this team are beginning to gel nicely and will look forward to the summer ahead with confidence.
The first game is always vital in a blitz and this was no different on Saturday when we met Kilkenny team, Kilmacow. This was a tough hard game with the result in the balance right up the final whistle. Carrig raced into an early lead and with two minutes left on clock the score was 1-5 to 3pts, but a late surge from Kilmacow narrowed the gap to 3pts and it was game on entering the final seconds. Kilmacow had one last chance when a powerful shot came off the crossbar, the final whistle sounded and we were off to that vital win.
The second game against Tipperary team, Burgess, was a much more comfortable affair. The physically bigger Burgess team had no answer to Carrigaline’s much slicker hurling and in a 20 minute spell of wonderful hurling they knocked over 14pts to run out easy winners on a score line of 14pts to 3pts.
With two wins under our belt and with the other group games going our way we knew playing our final game that we were semi-final bound and anyone who had thoughts of heading to Tullamore for the Cork/Offaly game had to quickly re-arrange their plans.
The final group game against St.Judes from Dublin was a niggly low scoring affair with Carrigaline managing to hold on for a third victory on a scoreline of 4pts to 3pts.
We now had a two hour wait for our semi-final against Ratharney from Westmeath. We left Bagenalstown and headed into Carlow Town Hurling Club, the venue for the remaining games.
The buzz with the lads was great and in glorious sunshine they took to the field for their semi-final in great confidence and again out-hurled their opponents from start to finish running out comfortable winners on a score line of 1-11 to 3pts.
In the other Semi-Final it was Roscrea (Tipp) V Naas (Kildare) with Naas progressing and hotly tipped to make it three-in-a-row, but the Carrigaline lads were having none of it and knew one more good performance would give them the Cup and bring the title home for the second time in the Club’s history.(last won in 2004).
The final was everything you wanted from a team. The Carrig lads tore into their opponents from the off and they produced some sublime hurling. There was no way these lads were going to be beaten and when eight different players registered scores in the final you knew this was one of those days when work on the training ground was transferred to the pitch when it counted most. The final score was 2-9 to 3pts and we were Champions. It is fair to say that no one lad won this day on his own, this was truly a team performance from all 20 panel members.
Scorers for the tournament: Michael Lynch 3-6: Cillian McIntrye 1-8: Cillian McSweeney 0-9: Eoin Moynihan 0-5: Dylan O Brien 0-4: Shane Griffen 0-4: Jamie Buckley 0-2: Shane Griffen 0-1: Darragh O Sullivan 0-1: Anthony O’Reilly 0-1: Kevin O’Connell 0-1:
Full Panel: Robert Foster, Philip Ahern, Michael O’Grady, Brian Curran, Kevin O Connell, Jamie Kind, Darragh O Sullivan, Cillian McSweeney, Cillian McIntrye, Shane Griffin, Eoin Moynihan, Shane Griffin (Nova), Jamie Buckley, Michael Lynch, Anthony O’Reilly, Robert O’Shea, David O’Donovan, Dylan O’Brien, David Drinan, Andrew Thomas, Jason Brady.