Unsettled Clooney-Quin lose out in opening round

Castlegregory 1-16  Clooney Quin 0-4

CASTLEGREGORY justified favouritism when they accounted for Clooney-Quin in the opening round of the Munster Junior Football Championship last Sunday.

The Kerry champions were the superior outfit throughout and fully merited their win but one must feel a little sorry for Clooney-Quin who weren’t helped by the fact that there was a late venue change.
It is understood that Castlegregory had contacted the Munster Council early on Sunday morning to advise them that their pitch wasn’t playable and were told that it was a decision for the referee.
The inclement weather saw conditions deteriorate throughout Sunday morning but it wasn’t until Cork referee Michael Collins arrived at Castlegregory and inspected the pitch at 1.15pm that it was deemed unplayable.
At that stage, Clooney-Quin had almost completed their pre-match warm-up, according to team mentor Brian O’Neill.
The game was then switched to Ashe Park in Dingle and it was 3pm, an hour after the scheduled start-up time, that the match finally got underway.
“We then had to get back onto the bus and travel for another half an hour and re-commence our warm-up. It was most unsatisfactory and contributed to the fact that it took us a while to settle. We were playing with a very strong wind in the first half and we had a couple of great goal chances,” according to O’Neill who was full of praise for the condition of the pitch in Dingle, which he described as perfect.
The Clare side certainly took a while to settle and should have done better in the early stages. They led by 0-2 to 0-1 at the end of the first quarter but the writing was on the wall when they trailed by a point at half-time, 0-4 to 0-3 with all of the Clare side’s scores coming from their free-taker John Earls.
There was really only one team in this contest in the second half as the Kerry champions dominated in most positions and kicked excellent scores from a variety of positions. The game’s only goal came seven minutes into the second period and it was scored by Colm O‘Mahoney.
In the semi-final this week, Castlegregory will play Glanworth from Cork at Austin Stack Park in Tralee.

Castlegregory: S Kenny; G O’Connor, J Scully, J O’Connor; S O’Mahoney, S Browne, A Finn; M O’Sé, R Kelleher; J B Spillane, A Fitzgerald, C O’Connor; A McNamara, B Lynch, V O’Mahony.
Subs: S Hennessy for C O’Connor; C Sills for S O’Mahoney, J Fitzgerald for A Fitzgerald; A Lynch for O’Sé; P Lynch for G O’Connor.
Scorers: C O’Mahoney (1-1), A Fitzgerald, C O’Connor, B Lynch, R Kelleher (0-2 each); S Browne, A Finn, JB Spillane, A McNamara, A Lynch, S Hennessy andJ Fitzgerald (0-1) each.

Clooney-Quin: Brian Kennedy; David Kennedy, Fergal Doyle, Shane McNamara; Dara Hannon, ,Cillian Duggan, Mike McNamara; Fergal Lynch, Martin McInerney; Trevor Lee, Cathal Egan, John Earls; Ryan O’Neill, Pat Gardiner, Malachy Murray.
Subs: Ger Leamy for Lee; Conor Harrison for D Kennedy; Robbie Downes, for O’Neill and Kieran Quinn for Dara Hannon;
Scorers: John Earls (0-4).

Referee: Michael Collins, Cork.