Intermediates beat Fingallians, 28 April 2007
Kilmacud Crokes Intermediate hurlers travelled North to Lawless Park in Swords for their second match in the Intermediate Hurling Championship. Fingallians beat Kilmacud in this northside venue two years ago and last year Crokes only overcame the northsiders by 0-3 at home, so this was always going to be a tough fixture.
Fingallians opened the scoring after a minute with a point and dominated the early exchanges. In the 4th minute the upright saved Crokes from a certain goal. On seven minutes Dara Burke laid off a good ball to Eoin Roche who accelerated well and goaled from 10 yards, shipping a heavy tackle en route. Dara Burke immediately followed this with a great catch and run effort, finishing with a good score. Fingallians stuck to their game plan and continued to win plenty of possession around the middle, raining balls in to the Crokes back four, who were excellent during this period. The score of the second half came in the 17th minute when Ray Mangan plucked a ball from the air under pressure and delivered a great pass to Dara Burke, who laid it in front of Diarmuid Howley, who scored off his left hand side. Howley pulled a hamstring shortly after this and Conor Condon came in to full forward. Fingallians responded a few minutes later with a goal through their full forward, who left Paul Graham with no chance. The half time score was 1-4 apiece and Fingallians had 6 wides compared to 2 from Kilmacud Crokes.
Crokes and Fingallians exchanged a couple of points in the first few minutes of the second half to leave the score at 1-6 apiece. The second half continued in this vein with the two teams playing out a stalemate. However an Eoin de Paor long range free half way through the second half seemed to settle Crokes and McSweeney followed this with a good point and de Paor again with another free, to give Crokes a 0-3 point advantage. The teams exchanged points one more time to see the final score finish 1-13 to 1-10.
There was a sense of relieve in the Crokes team coming away with a win from Lawless Park and Fingallians will rue their wides and missed opportunities. Crokes will take the positives and can take solace from the fact they won when they were far from their best. There is a lot of work to do in advance of their next championship match against Ballyboden on Tuesday the 8th of May.
Team: P Graham, A Hopkins, T Donohue, D Canny, R Mangan, E de Paor(0-2 F), W Ryan(0-1), D McSweeney (0-2), D Baker (0-1), N Casey, JR Hunt (P Clinton), D Burke (0-1) (H O’Connor 40 min), A Crean (0-1), D Howley (0-1) (C Condon (0-2)- 20 min), E Roche (1-0, 0-1 Free) (R Power half time 0-1 F)