U-21 Football Championship

Under 21’s Reach Final

Our U-21 hurling team qualified for the East Cork ‘B’ final last Saturday. Our game against Russell Rovers was played in Rostellan, having being changed from Carrigtwohill on Friday. Despite playing against a cross-field breeze we got off to a great start. Daniel Lane opened the scoring with a point in the second minute and doubled his tally three minutes later. Stephen Pratt and Daniel Dooley took our score to 0-4 before the Shanagarry side had their opening point. A great drive from Kevin O’Keeffe raised a green flag to put us 1-4 to 0-1 ahead. Our defence was ably dealing with the Russell Rovers attacks, Liam Forde, Stephen Walsh and Shane Kearney all leading by example. Daniel Dooley had his second point before Shane Kearney (free) and Daniel Lane added two more. Michael Collins and Stephen Boyce completed our first half scoring with two points. This left us 1-9 to 0-1 ahead at the break.

Russell Rovers made an all our affront from the restart. They hit over 2 points from frees before Michael Collins had a great goal to put us 2-9 to 0-3 ahead. After this our lads took over and goals from Daniel Dooley and Daniel Lane at either side of a Michael Collins point put us 4-10 to 0-3 ahead. Russell Rovers in fairness tired very hard but all our backs were well on top. Points from Stephen Boyce (2), Kevin O’Keeffe and Daniel Lane (free) and 1-1 from Michael Collins brought our final tally to 5-15 to 0-5 for Russell Rovers. This was an easy win and the team showed a good improvement from the quarter final against Cobh.

Our opponents in the final will be St Catherines who defeated Cloyne by 2-12 to 2-8 in the second semi final in Youghal last weekend. Having just won the East Cork and County minor hurling championship titles, St Catherines are on a high at present. Many of their Under 21 team have played senior and junior championship hurling this year. They will obviously be favourites to win the U-21 title, having defeated Aghada and Cloyne en route to the final. At the time of writing there is no definite news but is now unlikely that the final will be played on next Saturday October 25th. Players and supporters should check for details of the fixture.

Team & Scores: Gavin Quill, Philip Butler, Liam Forde, Brian Collins, Stephen Walsh, Shane Kearney (0-1), Sean O’Brien, Michael Kearney, Stephen Pratt (0-1), Stephen Boyce (0-3), Michael Collins (2-3), James Hogan, Daniel Lane (1-4), Kevin O’Keeffe (1-1), Daniel Dooley (1-2).

Subs: Vincent O’Keeffe, James O’Sullivan, Wayne Fitzgerald.