Shay Murtagh Precast Senior Football Championship: Garrycastle 0-14 Mullingar Shamrocks 0-12

What a difference 10 months or so can make. A 15 point humiliation last October in the quarter-final against Garrycastle was reduced to just 0-2 in Ballymore on Friday evening that might have well been a snatched victory as we attacked in waves in the final minutes in search of the match winning goal. It wasn’t to be, but the job of transitioning continues; Conn O’Hanlon and Ollie MacNamara made their championship debut and for the first time since 2000 ,Donal O’ Donoghue was an absentee from the setup. Marc Eivers, who defended brilliantly (– his best game in the senior championship by far) and Davey Coyne were back after long spells out with injury, David coming back from two cruciate injuries and showed no ill-effects from his long layoff.

In the opening 10 minutes, Justin Barrett (from the throw-in) and Cathal Mannion pointed for Garrycastle while two pointed frees from Denis Corroon maintained equilibrium. A second Cathal Mannion point pushed Garrycastle ahead and at this stage a black card for Davey Coyne proved to be crucial. We didn’t manage this phase of the game well mainly due to a total absence of cynicism on our part. A look at the video of how Dublin managed the ten minutes against Kerry last Sunday could be informative. Justin Barrett (0-2), the second point via a great Philly Shaw save, Michael Monaghan and a great Alex Gardiner point from distance added four points to the Garrycastle during the sin-bin phase. Jordan Warde pointed after a great surge through the centre from David Gavin as Davey Coyne returned. During this spell Shamrocks did create a great goalscoring opportunity but the woodwork foiled Dean Moore’s effort. David Gavin pointed but the final score of the half belonged to Garrycastle and Conor Cosgrove that secured a 0-8 to 0-4 interval lead for Garrycastle.

Shamrocks dominated on the restart that began with a good Philly Shaw save but points from Jordan Warde, and two frees from the superb Denis Corroon cut the deficit to the minimum. Tom O’ Halloran and Dean Moore exchanged points. Dean’s point began with a Philly Shaw short kick-out that went wrong but Conor Cosgrove’s chipped effort was gathered by Philly who began the move that ended with Deano adding the point at the other end and it was back to a one-point game (0-9 to 0-8). A four point swing possibly! Jimmy Dolan and Denis Corroon swopped scores before Garrycastle added two points to extend the lead to three points. Gary McCallum was black carded 7 minuted from the end, Jimmy Dolan pointed, Denis Corroon replied with a great pointed free (0-13 to 0-10). Jimmy Dolan again pointed as did Denis Corroon from play from a Dean Moore pass. A Jordan Warde point reduced the deficit and in the last frantic attacks the goal we needed was not to be.

A decent match between two evenly matched teams on the night as the statistics published on twitter on Friday night partly confirmed with one notable exception (apart from the scoreboard). Garrycastle retained 87% of their own kickouts Shamrocks retained 61%; Garrycastle won 35% of our kick-outs and Shamrocks won 7% of the Garrycastle restarts. Statistics don’t always lie.

Mullingar Shamrocks: Philly Shaw; Ryan Blundell, Efe Siode, Marc Eivers; Conn O’Hanlon (Zach Aherne), David Coyne, Dillon Matthews; Denis Corroon (0-7), David Gavin (0-1); Killian Daly (Aaron Purcell), Ross Corroon (Paddy Joyce), Eddie Moore (Micheál Curley); Oliver MacNamara (Lorcan Smyth), Dean Moore (0-1) and Jordan Warde (0-3).