Shamrocks 6-16, Dripsey 0-2
The improvement that some of the Shamrocke players have made over the last year was very evident to see as a Shamrocks team dismantled the visitors to Shanbally on Monday evening, on a perfect night for hurling.
The Shamrocks team played crisp, direct and stylish hurling to overwhelm Dripsey throughout the contest. Andrew O’ Grady was on top form from frees and blasted home a an early goal from play along with points from Mark Hitchmough and Christopher Hayes, and they were well set at half time, 2-9 to 0-1.
The second half was just one way traffic throughout as Shamrocks kept the scoreboard ticking over and added more scores through the aforementioned players plus James Lynam, David Andrews with a cracking goal, another cracker from Shane Flavin (1-1) and Cristóir Corkery who added a well deserved goal towards the end for his efforts.
Its amazing to see the level of hurling some of these players are playing at – they have done so much work with their mentors and with the minors and with their physical coach Garrett O’Flynn.
The only downside was that amazingly, Shamrocks had to play the entire first half with only 11 players (12 a side) against Dripseys 12 as a whole bunch of players yet again didnt turn up for the match. It is incredibly unfair on the players present who have to run themselves into the ground to cover the extra spaces and its to their credit that they went out and destroyed Dripsey. One Shamrocks player even came up from Wexford for the match and ran himself into the ground while his other team mates didnt bother to show up! Shamrocks had to get a player to stand in at corner forward to commence the second half – otherwise Dripsey would have rightfully claimed the victory under GAA rule, eventhough they were 14 points behind. The talent is there and I would encourage any readers here to go and watch either our Minor or U16 team play hurling as they are playing to a higher level for sure than the current grade they are in.
