Coolderry left the door open for Rynagh’s
Both St Rynagh’s and Coolderry have played enough big championship games in recent years to know that in terms of quality, supporters weren’t exactly treated to a classic county final last Sunday afternoon in Tullamore.
Backs were on top at both ends of the field for the majority of the game, and you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a forward who consistently got the better of their direct opponent. Aidan Treacy and Brian Carroll mixed good and bad, Eoin Ryan showed flashes of his talent, Niall Wynne made a solid contribution after coming in and arguably the best of the lot was Kevin Connolly, albeit only for the second half.
Yet it would be incorrect to say that this was down to any exceptional defending, since the high number of unforced errors, sloppy touches and poor decisions on the ball made life much easier for defenders throughout.
Neither side hurled at the level they produced in the semi-final, as Rynagh’s never found the rhythm that they showed for long stretches against Kilcormac-Killoughey, with Coolderry coming slightly closer to their Shinrone form. For that reason, they were probably the better team for 50 minutes of the game.
Take away five minutes at the start and the same again at the end, and this was a contest that was played out on exactly the lines that Brian Culbert and his players would have wanted. Their only problem was that outscoring St. Rynagh’s by 0-12 to 0-7 in that period wasn’t quite enough, and it left them vulnerable to Stephen Quirke’s late winner.
Meanwhile, Clodiagh Gaels secured their return to top tier hurling the previous day when they edged out Tullamore by a single point, yet another tough one to take for the Tullamore club. But they can probably have no complaints about the result, given that Clodiagh Gaels seemed to create better quality chances over the course of the hour.
Both sides had a dreadful wide count – 17 to 14, with Clodiagh having slightly more – but Clodiagh had many more misses from good, scoreable positions, as opposed to Tullamore who were struggling to get good ball closer to goal and were striking from deeper and wider spots.
Realistically, it’s a very different Clodiagh Gaels team to the side that experienced senior hurling previously in 2017 and while there is probably a little bit more raw talent in this group, results in Offaly would suggest that there is a mezzanine level of teams, probably containing the likes of Kinnitty and Seir Kieran, that they need to target.
As of yet, this is a group that has a lot of work to do to get up to the standards set by the leading clubs, but they’ll look at Ballinamere as a model for what can be achieved.
- Kevin Egan