Junior Hurling Championship

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Wednesday 7th July
JHC at Loughgiel
St Brigid's Cloughmills 4-10 v Creggan 3-10

Cloughmills are the team that are unbeaten at the top of Division 3 (2 above the Kickhams boys) and they can count themselves lucky to get away from Loughgiel with a victory on Wednesday night past.

This was a good performance from the Creggan team who performed very well in the face of what was supposed to be a easy victory for Cloughmills. This result and performance illustrates the fallacy that is Creggan still playing in Div 4B and shows that when we have all our players available (Which was still not the case on Wed night) that there is the possibility of playing hurling at a much higher level with this bunch of players.

The game started off poorly for Creggan with the Cloughmills full forward line causing major problems and 2 relatively soft goals were conceded in the 1st 10 minutes, Stevie would have been disappointed with conceding the 1st goal in particular. However, once Creggan got to grips at midfield with Sam and BJ prominent throughout we got back into the game with some good score taking from Thomas McCann.

The game really came to life when Conor McCann took his 1st goal opportunity and from then on it was nip and tuck. Our defence improved substantially with Paddy McAuley, Aidan Maguire and Odhran McCann dominating at half back and the full back line of Enda, Niall and Benny getting to grips with the speedy Cloughmills full forward line.  Another goal from Conor and the teams went in level at half time.

Again Cloughmills started the second half in whirlwind fashion and a well taken goal immediately after half time put Creggan on the back foot. However they dug in again and pulled back close again. Yet again another sucker punch goal meant that the lads were  7 points down at one stage but another superbly taken goal from Conor and it was game on. Creggan could easily have had a penalty in the last few minutes after a clear foul inside the 14 yard line but it wasn’t to be and Cloughmills ran out winners by a goal. The endeavour of the team from 1 to 15 could not be faulted but it was just that extra sharpness that Cloughmills had by being used to hurling at a faster level that made the difference.

After the game the thoughts turned to what ‘might have been’ and indeed we should have won this game but after this performance there is no point looking back the team must now focus and move forward to try to win the 2 cup competitions remaining and then hope that we win our two remaining league games and that other results go our way and we can get out of this division.

Not having everyone available to play in all matches has meant that the team has had an inconsistent year - changing this must be a priority for the players and management for the remainder of this campaign and future seasons. If we can get this team playing and training together with the players that are missing (at least 5 players were not available last Wednesday) then hurling in Creggan can go from strength to strength - if not we will continue to toil in the doldrums. This would be a waste of the obvious talent that exists and cannot and should not be allowed to happen.