Féile titles for Tuamgraney and Kilkishen

THERE was more success for Clare juvenile handball over the weekend with two Clare clubs picking up three 40×20 Féile na nGael titles. Two more teams reached the final of their respective divisions.
Kilkishen won the boys Division 2 title when they defeated Cork side Mallow. The club won the 2009 boys’ Division 1 title. The winning team was Gary Cooney, Ben McLoughlin, Cillian Nugent, Tiernan Agnew and Sean Murphy.
Kilkishen’s girls also reached the Division 2 final but were defeated by local rivals, Tuamgraney. The winners here were Clodagh Nash, Fiona Hayes, Amy Barrett and Ciara Doyle.
Tuamgraney made it a double, the club’s first ever Féile wins, when their boys’ team took the Division 4 honours. This was another all-Clare final with Clarecastle filling the runners-up spot. The winning team featured Cian Minogue, Oran Treacy, Ian Murray, Sean Pearl and Ciarán Hickey.
The Féile festival (handball, hurling and camogie) was this year hosted by Dublin and the handball finals were held in the impressive surroundings of the Citywest Arena, the main venue for this October’s World Handball Championships.
Citywest also played host to the Irish one-wall nationals over the weekend and Banner County players were again to the fore. In the men’s open, Diarmaid Nash went all the way to the final before losing out to rival Robbie McCarthy of Westmeath, 11-8 in the tiebreaker. Nash had a number of brilliant wins on the way to the decider, most notably in the semi-final against Armagh’s James Doyle, one of Ireland’s top exponents of the one-wall code. Nash’s Tuamgraney clubmate, Niall Malone, won the men’s 23 and under plate, while Kilkishen duo Chris Philpott and Sean Donnellan won the plate sections of the 19 and under and 17 and under singles events.
Meanwhile, the Munster 60×30 adult championships are down to final stages in most grades and while the majority of Clare players have fallen before the Munster final hurdle, Ashling Fitzgerald claimed the provincial junior ladies’ singles title with a 21-15, 21-2 win over Tipperary’s Karen Monaghan in Ballina. Ashling teams up with Edel O’Grady to play the Munster Junior Ladies’ Doubles final against Karen Monaghan and her partner, Ashling Horan, in Tuamgraney on Thursday, July 19  at 7.30pm.
Clooney’s John Nihill played the silver masters B singles Muster final against Limerick’s John Frazer this week (no result at time of writing). Declan Frawley of Clarecastle was defeated in the Munster intermediate singles final by CJ Fitzpatrick (Limerick).
Ballina man, David Hickey, competes in both the junior singles and doubles (with Mike Carroll) finals over the next week.