Round 4 of Division one of the Rose Hotel County League-Wednesday 16th August 2020
Ballymacelligott 0:08 Southern Gaels 5:11
Lining up at home versus the reigning County Champions of both U12 and U14 with this age group, the Ballymac Ladies were really up against it tonight. Minus selector Anthony Griffin and his two daughters Shonagh and Rachel with Eimear Curran also out, the task became harder. But what a turn out for the ladies, with a panel of 23 for the game, the ladies really took this game to a star studded Southern Gaels boasting numerous Kerry players at U14 and U16 levels. Despite Southern Gaels racing into a 1-3 lead after the first 11 mins, we started to settle well and got our first point from a Ciara Palmer free, quickly followed by a point from play by Roisin Rahilly and another free from Ciara Palmer. This left the score at 1-3 to 0-3 at the water break, with Anna Collins very unlucky with a great goal chance. In the next quarter SG put up 2-3 to two points for Ballymac from Anna Collins and Ciara Palmer. But yet again two good goal chances went a begging.
Into the second half and we began making changes to get as much game time as possible for the team and the physicality of the SG ladies was beginning to tell. However, we fought right to the end, with a further three points from Anna Collins and two from Ella Quirke one from play and one from a free. We put up a great performance and again our ladies did a huge amount of great defending and moving the ball up the field. In the end the difference was how clinical SG were in front of the posts winning out on a score line of 5-11 to 0-8, however we had six really good goal chance’s that we failed to convert, two of them leading directly to two SG goals at the other end where we were punished for not taking our chances and getting turned over.
Kerry Hennessy, overworked in goal for us, made a number of good saves, with the full back line being led superbly by Lorna Daly and another towering performance by Grainne Galvin ably assisted by Abbey Leahy, Maura Culloty, Ciara Kerins and Sarah Mason in turn, Allyssa Leen O’Shea rock solid at centre back with support from Cathy Palmer, surging runs from Kate Collins and hard work from Laura Kelly. Our midfielders Roisin Rahilly and Keelin Enright got through a trojan amount of work and kept going until the end. Ella Quirke and Ciara Palmer put in their best performances of the year so far and we’re huge thorns in SG’s side, while Rachel Creedon and Emma Daly did a lot of running and interconnecting the play. The inside line of Jill Quirke, Anna Collins, Emma Leen, Charlotte Geary, Niamh Lynch and Roisin Raggett worked hard to close down the SG defense and link up with the rest of our forwards.
Onto next Wednesday night when we welcome a very strong Austin Stacks side to Ballymacelligott. Great performance ladies, we are very proud of you.