Search Results for 'Stephen Broderick'

I can only imagine that Ballintubber are devastated and disillusioned and as the week wears on the pain becomes more bearable. Ballintubber’s season has so many similarities to Charlestown’s year in ‘09. We went unbeaten in senior football that year in every competition and won the four available trophies within Mayo, similar to what Ballintubber achieved this year.

There were questions asked about Corofin and how good they really were going into Sunday's Connacht Club Senior Football Championship final, they had swatted aside with ease all that stood before them in Galway and the Leitrim champions Aughawillian hardly raised a glove against them. But make no mistake this current Corofin team are one serious outfit. The bookies had them odds on favorites before the game against a side who in their last two games had beaten the side who had lost in the All Ireland final, just six months earlier and the team who had claimed that same championship the year before.

There were questions asked about Corofin and how good they really were going into Sunday's Connacht Club Senior Football Championship final, they had swatted aside with ease all that stood before them in Galway and the Leitrim champions Aughawillian hardly raised a glove against them. But make no mistake this current Corofin team are one serious outfit.

Ballintubber go into their first senior provincial final as underdogs with the bookies, but the men from Clogher will be having no doubts in their own minds that they are up to the task on Sunday.

The eagerly anticipated AIB Connacht senior Football Club Championship final between Corofin and Mayo champions Ballintubber takes place this Sunday (2pm) at MacHale Park, Castlebar.

The eagerly anticipated AIB Connacht senior Football Club Championship final between Corofin and Mayo champions Ballintubber takes place this Sunday (2pm) at MacHale Park, Castlebar.

A few weeks ago before the county final between Castlebar Mitchels and Ballintubber I envisaged a predicament that Cillian O’Connor could find himself in. I thought nothing of it at the time because I expected Castlebar to retain the Moclair Cup. O’Connor was at the final stages of the trials for the International Rules team, with his skill set and physical attributes I have no doubt he would have been on Paul Early's panel. When Ballintubber won the county final I immediately thought of O’Connor and the predicament, club versus country? It was simple; he was going nowhere and immediately pulled out of the Irish set up to give his full attention to his club.

He may have been the elder partner to the younger inter-county man in the middle of the field on Sunday in MacHale Park but Ballintubber's Stephen Broderick put in masterful performance alongside Jason Gibbons in midfield. The Ballintubber middle-third duo were supreme throughout the game and had Karl Mannion and Padraig Kelly in their back pockets for long periods of the match.

When the big questions are asked the big players stand up and that's what happened on Sunday, when Ballintubber battled their way into their first ever Connacht senior championship final. When the Roscommon champions came knocking, Alan Dillon, Cillian O'Connor, Jason Gibbons and Stephen Broderick all stood up and had the answers for the questions put to them and their team-mates and in a few weeks time, they'll be ready to answer those same questions from Corofin in the final.

They knew they didn’t do themselves justice last year when they crashed out of the Mayo Senior Championship at the quarter-final stage and Ballintubber used that loss as motivation to drive them on this time around.