On Thursday the 20th of March St. Ailbe’s played Killenaune in the second round of the Munster U15 Football Championship. It was a wet day and that was made even worse by the terrible condition of the Killenaune field, which was extremely long for a football match and had many lumps and bumps.
Killenaule got the first sore score, kicking a long range point. Not long after an unfortunate error by the St. Ailbe’s goalie cleared the ball right into the opponent’s hands who made no mistake putting the ball in the Ailbe’s net. The lads reacted well by some great link up play between Eoin Ryan, Mark Compton and James Dee which resulted in a nice point. Then a mistake by the Killenaune goalie resulted in Eoin kicking a point. The game was really close at this point with the score 1-1 to 0-2 in Killenaune’s favour. But then Ailbe’s defence switched off and Killenaune got 5 quick points. The team seemed stunned but things got even worse…. Killenaule wing forward scored a goal from some distance. So going into half time the score was Ailbe’s 1-2 to Killenaule 2-8
After an inspiring half time talk by manager Mr. McGrath we came out fighting with a lot of nice football that got us two points by Eoin Ryan and Liam Og. The amazing football was brought to an end by the Killenaune full back who broke up the play, drove the ball up the field which resulted in a goal for Killenaule. But there was a great reaction by the Ailbe’s captain who scored a great goal from close range. Unfortunately, Killenaule responded well, scored three points in quick succession. That was the end of the action for the rest of the game so it ended 2-5 to Ailbe’s and 3-10 to killenaune.
It was disappointing for the team to lose by such a large margin but at times throughout the game Ailbe’s really dominated. Mr. Mc Grath was proud in saying “It was a hard played game on a terrible field but at times we had all the possession.” For the dedication of Eoin Ryan he was awarded man of the match.
Billy and Zehra
