Barryroe GAA

Kilbrittain., 19:30PM

At first reading a 1-14 to 0-6 loss looks pretty bad, but that would be harsh on a Barryroe team, with so many young players starting to come through.

We lost Mike Brien to an  injury sustained in the  in the warm-up, something that's becoming more common in all sports. Kieran Griffin went to a black card, not sure what for, but the ref had me baffled for most of the game, and Jason Fleming sustained an injury early on in a tackle which resulted in a yellow card, although most people thought the free should have gone the other way. He played on for a while, but had to come off the pitch later.

Bandon opened the scoring with a point after a minute, but four minutes later, Ger Leary broke all the way up the pitch and was on hand to score a great equaliser. Mark Crowley put us in front with a good free, but Bandon sandwiched two points with a soft goal to lead by 1-4 to 0-2.  Two frees from Mark Crowley brought the gap back to a goal, but two further points for the town side, left them leading by 1-06 to  0-4  at the break.

We were now facing the wind in the second half and in the next 15 minutes, the town side added four points to a Mark Crowley free. On 21 minutes, keeper Conor Madden, advanced to block a goal chance for Bandon, but the yellow and whites added three more points before the end to a single score from John O'Donovan. 

Barryroe pierced the first line of the Bandon defence regularly in the second half, but a lot of wrong options and passing that was marginally off, proved our undoing. It looked as if the occasion got to some of our younger players, with some of our better displays coming from the likes of Ger Leary, Clive Cahalane, Jason Fleming and sub Timmy Carroll.

It's been a good year for Barryroe football overall. A lot of things went against us, but it's a big improvment on recent years.

We hope to say a bit more on this on the home web page later.

Here are some pictures from the game.

Jason is almost strangled, play on.

Clive battles on.

Eamon holds up his man.

Mark knocks over a free.

Tadgh covers across.

Lán Chúl.