The Rower Inistioge have been the form team of this year’s league and championship.
They won the league by defeating Sunday’s opponents in extra time, and then negotiated the hard road to the championship final with wins over last year’s beaten finalists Mullinavat and 2009 champions St Lachtain’s. It’s been a confidence-building run.
Danesfort have been many people’s favourites for this title from the off. They have three top class inter-county players on board, and they were beaten in last year’s semi-final.
Wins over teak-tough John Locke’s and Glenmore have brought them on as a team, and they have improved since the league final loss four weeks ago.
Chairman of the Rower-Inistioge Jackie Lyng feels that the wonderful work at underage level in the club is starting to pay off.
“This team hasn’t just arrived overnight,” he said.
“It is the culmination of a lot of hard work at schools, juvenile, minor and under-21 level over the past decade. We got to two under-21 A finals, losing to Dicksboro, we won an under-21 B and also made the minor A final in that period.
“Those squads are now starting to mature, and hopefully we can win on Sunday.”
Danesfort have travelled the same underage development route, and while they may not have appeared in the same number of A finals, there has been a steady stream of young players coming through the juvenile structure in the club.
The parish on the edge of the city has come alive over the past 15 years, with the GAA club leading the way. The chairman of the club, Martin Tynan, is happy with the team’s progress in the past month.
“I think the team has started to come good at the right time,” he said.
“Over the past month, we have the three county players at training on a full-time basis, and that has been a massive boost to the training sessions”.
Lightning start
The Rower-Inistioge got off to a lightning start in their semi-final win over St Lachtain’s, and led 0-5 to 0-0 after 10 minutes.
The Freshford team reeled them in, and it was close all the way through, until Michael Grace shot the winners back into the lead midway through the second half, to give them the confidence to see it out. A feature of their league final and championship campaign has been a strong finish and that has been down to manager Pat O’Neill’s relentless pursuit of top level fitness in the squad.
Danesfort will look to their league campaign for comfort, as they beat The Emeralds playing with 14 men for 45 minutes of the game, and followed that up with a narrow win over Mooncoin without Richard Hogan. The championship games asked a lot of questions also and they won two slugging matches against John Locke’s and Glenmore. The team management came away from both games with a lot more knowledge about their team.
What about Sunday ?
If Danesfort start as sluggishly as they did in the semi-final they will be beaten. On that occasion, they didn’t appear to be clued in at all in the opening quarter.
The Rower Inistioge will feel that they can play a lot better than they did when beating St Lachtain’s. They seemed to be unsure and lacked composure on the ball.
But given that they had lost four intermediate semi-finals, it was understandable that the fear of losing was the dominant feature of their play in the middle part of the match. The team management of both teams will be paying particular attention to the opposition’s scoring threat.
Michael Grace hit six points from play in the semi-final, and he was also the key man in attack in the win over Mullinavat. Paul Sheehan and James Cashin took the Danesfort defence for 1-3 each from play in the league final.
Those returns will have been noted by Danesfort.
However, Pat O’Neill knows of the danger posed by Richard Hogan and Robbie Walsh, and we can expect Seanie Cummins and Joe Lyng to play key parts in keeping that duo quiet.
Confidence is the key to Sunday’s encounter and the team that starts well will take a major step towards the title. The Rower-Inistioge have the better credentials in this year’s championship and they have had the ideal two-week run-in to the final.
If they can nullify Danesfort’s three county players, they will win. If not, it will be Danesfort’s day.
