Senior Football Championship: Mullingar Shamrocks 2-5 Killucan 1-8
Another last gasp salvage of a championship point as Dylan McDermott kicked the all-important equalising point with the last kick of the game in The Downs on Saturday evening. For the second successive year Killucan and Mullingar Shamrocks had drawn in the championship qualifiers.
It was Cusack Park v St Loman’s revisited for the opening half as Killucan dominated the exchanges and Shamrocks totally underperformed and were decidedly fortunate to only trail by a single point at the interval. The Killucan full-forward line kicked the opening five points with Paul Greville (0-3) and the Doyle twins the men on target. This end of the field produced one of the great personal duels of the evening between Paul Greville and Kieran Gavin with the dominating the most dangerous Killucan forward and restricting his contribution to a single point from play. The fifteenth minute approached when Patrick Fagan pointed for Shamrocks; a misplaced Killucan kick-out followed almost immediately. David Bryan made amends with a superb save but Tye Adamson was on hand to finish the rebound to the net (0-5 to 1-1). Kieran Doyle responded with a point which incredibly proved to be Killucan’s final score from play. An injured Denis Corroon and Simon Quinn landed points to level matters. Killucan had several near misses but these don’t register on the scoreboard. Eddie Moore made a great goal-line stop to prevent a certain goal, the uprights were hit on two occasions and just before the interval Philly Shaw needed all of his agility to keep out another net-bound effort. David Bryan stepped-up and pointed the resultant 45 to leave Shamrocks trailing by 0-7 to 1-3 when Sean Carroll called for an interval.
The teams shared a goal each in a pointless opening ten minutes. Killucan extended their lead with a penalty goal converted in style by Conor Jordan; Shamrocks responded with a goal created by Donal O’Donoghue who threaded a superb left-footed pass through the narrowest of defensive gaps in front of the inrushing Daragh Daly (the outstanding player on view) who crashed the ball to the net (1-7 to 2-3). The pass in its design and execution was Cooperesque in its beauty. Dean Moore made his return to the Shamrocks colours replacing the injured Denis Corroon and made an immediate impact, so too did Paddy Joyce who replaced Seanie Daly, David Gavin also added some bite to the attack. A Kieran Doyle free in the fifteenth minute proved to be Killucan’s final score of the evening. Dean Moore was fouled and pointed the resultant free to narrow the gap to the minimum. Mullingar Shamrocks were guilty of some bad misses at this stage and three very scorable frees were missed. With time added for each substitution most club matches now extend to 35 minutes for the second-half and it wasn’t until the final seconds of time added-on that Dylan McDermott won a great possession and kicked the all-important levelling point for Mullingar Shamrocks. This was the third occasion in recent matches that Shamrocks have manufactured vital scores deep into lost time. Living dangerously? Perhaps, but it is also indicative of the fighting spirit in this group of players when all seems lost.
Mullingar Shamrocks: Philly Shaw; David Coyne, Kieran Gavin, Edie Moore; Aaron Purcell, Kilian Daly, Patrick Fagan (0-1); Darragh Daly (1-0) and Denis Corroon (0-1) (Dean Moore, 0-1) (Dylan McDermott, 0-1); Micheál Curley, Donal O’ Donoghue, Brendan O’Reilly (Efi Siode), Tye Adamson (1-0) [Darren Keena] Simon Quinn (0-1) [David Gavin] and Seanie Daly (Paddy Joyce).
