The under 21 team played in the district final tonight against Rathnure in St Patrick Park and won on a scoreline of 2-12 to 2-09. Conditions made it a poor game of hurling with both sets of forwards finding it difficult to score. We traded points for the whole of the first half, but Rathnure missed many chances and we went in at half time the suprise leaders by 0-05 to 0-04. The second half produced a more intense battle, which we were on top in for most of the second half, but it still took some great saves from Morgan Gahan to keep our lead . At one stage, thanks to two goals from James Sweeney, we were nine points ahead. Despite conceding two goals in injury time we managed to win the game by three points and have now qualified for the county semi final. It was certainly not our best performance and improvements will still have to be made for the next day.
Team: 1. Morgan Gahan 2. Ray O Brien 3. Aidan Gahan 4. Liam Gahan 5. Dean Fenlon 6. Niall O Reilly 7. Paul Gahan 8. Padraic Flynn 9. Mick Sweeney 10. Laurence Murphy 11. Matthew Dunne 12. Mark Walsh 13. Peter Mernagh 14. Bryan Dwyer 15. James Sweeney Sub: Patrick Walsh for Bryan Dwyer, also Sean McCabe, Tomas O Leary, Diarmaid Breen, Brian Bolger, James Gahan and Sean Murphy.
Scores: Peter Mernagh 0-07 (0-06 frees), James Sweeney (2-00), Matthew Dunne (0-02), Mark Walsh (0-02), Laurence Murphy (0-01)