Top flight competition

The staging of the All-Ireland Youths Darts championship at the West County Hotel, Ennis, last weekend was “an outstanding success” according to Clare manager Kevin Corry.
“We were disappointed that the Clare teams didn’t win but they were very unlucky and only missed out by a few points. In fact, our A team were in the same group as the eventual winners, Dublin, and the runners-up, Galway. We just lost narrowly to both,” he said this week.
There were four groups, two of five and two of four. Clare A were in a four team group with Dublin, Galway and Tipperary B.
“We were drawn against Dublin in the first game and we knew that this would be very tough. We just lost out on a 3-2 scoreline,” he explained.
Team captain Dara Clancy and Stevie Considine were the Clare winners.
In their next game against Galway, Clare lost 4-1 with Brendan Casey recording Clare’s point. They went on to record a 4-1 win over Tipperary B but lost out on qualification from the group by two points.
Clare’s B team was grouped with Roscommon, Galway B, Limerick and Cork and they just missed out on qualification by three points. Liam O’Connor from Ennistymon won three games out of four while Adam Crowe from Clarecastle and Martin Casey from Kilrush were others to impress with this team.
In their final game, Clare included nine-year-old Adam Spencer from Ennis in their team and he won his game.
“Overall, it was a tremendous success and there was a very high standard,” commented the Clare manager, who paid tribute to the Clare secretary Mary Burke for her work in getting the competition to Clare and in the promotion of youths darts.
“Involvement in youth darts is up by 25% this year and there is also a very high standard as evidenced in the final when Conor Lowry from Galway took out a game in 12 darts.”
A number of point ranking events for the Irish team, who will be heading to Canada next year, are expected to be staged in Ennis and Ennistymon later this year.
Meanwhile, plans are now going ahead for the Irish team’s trip to Belgium in July when Clare’s Dara Clancy and James Youdell will be part of the squad.