Seniors slump to embarrassing
defeat
After the highs of last year's season when the Senior
team won their first 10 games of the season to qualify
for the County Final, we were brought down to earth with
a major bump on Saturday evening when a youthful and
unfancied Bannow-Ballymitty side inflicted a
comprehensive 0-9 to 0-4 defeat on our first fifteen in
the first round of the 2005 Senior championship.
This was one of the worst performances by any Sarsfields
team for quite some time and was compounded by the sending
off of Colm Callery near the end of the first half. Playing
against the wind in that period, we were completely
outplayed and were lucky to be only 07 to 0-1 behind at the
interval. Any hopes that a wind assisted revival was on the
cards in the second half were quickly erased as the players
struggled with their passing and possession was repeatedly
given away too easily. Emmett Keeling did have a gilt edged
opportunity to goal midway through the second half, a score
that would have brought us to within 2 points of the
winners, but somehow he drilled the ball wide from 10 yards
and with that went any hope of victory.
The team have a lot of work to do if they are to redeem
themselves this season and with a number of very strong
teams in the losers section, including last year's champions
Starlights, they will have to work very hard in the field
over the coming months or we could face the ignominy of a
relegation dog-fight less than 12 months after appearing in
a County final.
There were one or two positives from this game; John
Bergin settled down well to have a good debut while the
return of Mikey Hanrahan as a second half substitute was a
welcome sight.
Team: James Roice; John Bergin, Paul Harrington, Brendan
Mulligan; David Gannon, Emmet Keeling, Colm Callery;
John
Harrington, Dermot Foley; Donnacha Doyle, Liam Goff,
Kevin Gore; Colin Bent, Darren
Browne, Philly Cullen.
Subs: Mikey Hanrahan for Gore, Jason Murphy for Foley;
Ciaran O'Leary for Goff; Colin Keeling for Gannon |
