Our team travelled to Kevinsfort Park on Wednesday last to play the final of our group B against Knockminna NS. It was to be our first meeting in the competition and the prize was a trip to the county finals.
We had a long wait for the referee but when he finally arrived we got underway in fine style. Maugherow stormed into a two point lead and had the better of the opening five minutes. We gave a way a needless free on the 14 yard line and allowed the Knockminna lads to get back into the game. From that single point we never recovered our shape or our gameplan for the rest of the half.
Knockminna tore us asunder and all we could manage was glaring wides as the clock ticked down to half time. Our heads were down as we had been taught a footballing lesson by the South Sligo men.
From the restart Maugherow showed greater purpose and began to win dirty ball that had escaped them in the first half. We pushed hard but our shooting was atrocious and points that we would have scored easily in earlier rounds were blasted wide in a show of terrible marksmanship.
Caoileann had a superb second half but he was let down by the midfield who failed to provide him with ball after he had run from the back to get into a supporting role. With no other options to turn to we had to fight on as we were.
On a day when our star players failed to shine Evan was given the job of marking the best player on the pitch and he held him scoreless for the entire second half. We were able to see flashes of the old Sean as he tacked on a couple of points but overall we were below par.
We managed to hold Knockminna to one point from a 45 in the second half and we closed the gap but we had given ourselves a mountain to climb and Knockminna ran out 9 points to 5 victors and we have to say they were well worth the victory.
Apologies to the sixth class lads in that we were unable to get you to a county final this year. We learned a lot in this competition and we did North Sligo proud. The fact remains that in every game we took to the field against nine players who all play for local clubs while we have only three regular players. We will never improve without more involvement at club level from our boys.
I am delighted to see Aoife, Oda, Margaret, Blaine, Augustine, Aaron, Ryan and Alfie at training every Saturday with St. Moloise. We need more like them to bring us up to the standard required for inter schools competition.
Next year…..
