Dripsey 2-5, Shamrocks 5-11
Shamrocks made the long journey to Dripsey on Friday night and came away with the two points in their first league game to go ahead. A few decisions regarding player placement had to be made prior to throw in but all seemed to work out in the end. Shamrocks started the brighter and led 1-2 to no score after Mark Hitchmough and Andrew O’Grady with a beautiful flicked goal from a long delivery showed what they are capable of with proper deliveries into them. The home side got to grips with the Shamrocks fast start and came way more into it and indeed drew level coming up to haltime and a tight game looked on the cards. They even went ahead just on haltime and the Shamrocks lads heads were down. It was 2-4 to 1-4 for Dripsey at halftime.
However, they had played well in that half and the skills that they had been covering in training were evident at times, improvement was noticable. This was stressed to them at halftime and along with the switching of Joe O’Brien onto the best Dripsey forward and Cormac Scriven into goal, it transformed the game. The second half was one of the most complete performances from a Shamrocks hurling team in a good while. They outscored Dripsey 4-8 to 0-2 in that time and indeed could have had more. The entire team upped their game, used the spaces a lot better and the selectors at the end were more than happy with what they had seen. It is unfair to single out individual players but two of our under 13 players, Mark Hitchmough with 0-7 from play (left and right) and Andrew O’Grady with 4-1 from play have to get a mention. They have improved their striking along with many others on the panel but need to do more; this is only one game. Parents will get a text regarding next training session but its provisionally fixed for Tuesday evening. The next hurling game is at home to Grenagh next Thursday evening at 7pm.
Team: J. O’Brien, B. Crowley, S. Kidney, S. Kelleher, C. O’Grady, C. Scriven, R. Horgan, B. Coffan, D. Scriven, A. Boland, T. Murphy, A. O’Grady, M. Hitchmough
