Forwards fire Blue Devils towards another All-Ireland adventure
Young Tooreen supporters, Darragh, Cian and Gareth Finn, were in a happy mood after their team won Sunday's Connacht final in Athleague. Pictures: David Farrell Photography
Between them they scored ten of Tooreen’s 21 points, five points each, and afterwards Eoin Delaney and Shane Boland expressed their pride at their team successfully defending its Connacht intermediate hurling title, after an epic battle with Ballinderreen last Sunday.
Delaney was one of two players on the pitch to score five points from play, with Niall Coen performing impressively at the edge of the square for the Galway challengers also, but to the victors go the spoils so not only was Eoin Delaney collecting another provincial winner’s medal but he was presented with the Connacht GAA Man-of-the-Match award for a quite exceptional display of corner-forward play.
Delaney’s opening two points both arrived in the 23rd minute, the first a result of a monster clearance by his goalkeeper Bobby Douglas, the second when he fetched the resultant puck out of Ballinderreen goalkeeper Michael Kelly and drove the sliothar straight back between the sticks. Those points sent Tooreen in front for the first time in the match and from that moment on, their Galway opponents weren’t even able to get back level.
“It was awful close, we had to dig very deep. The substitutes made a massive impact coming on,” Eoin Delaney told the afterwards.
“We knew if we worked hard that our hurling would get us over the line in the end, so thankfully it did.”
Delaney was unfortunate not to add a first-half goal to his haul when ‘keeper Kelly turned his low effort past the post, but he did shoot three more points from play in the second-half – as the Blues set aside a slow start to the game that had seen their opponents rush into a 0-4 to no score lead.
“We never panicked,” Eoin Delaney insisted. “We knew if we stuck to the game-plan, that the scores would come.
“We’re slow enough starters but we knew that if we kept in the game, we’d reel them in.”
Shane Boland has become something of a lucky general, captaining Tooreen to their last three Connacht titles. He too, like Eoin Delaney and Sean Kenny, fired over five points, his first from play, which brought his side level for the first time in the match, and the rest from frees, including three in a seven-minute spell at the beginning of the second-half to help open a five points margin between the teams.
“It was a great game, the hardest final,” suggested Boland afterwards.
“Conditions were tough, heavy. That first fifteen minutes, it was hard to get a second wind. And whenever we thought we were pulling two or three points away, [Ballinderreen] always came back. It came down to the last puck of the game.
“I know they’ll do themselves proud in senior next year,” he said of the opposition’s promotion to the Galway senior championship. But Tooreen are on their own journey.
“There’s new leaders every day,” Boland explained. “The likes of Eoin Delaney was unbelievable today; just when things are really tight, for a young fella like that to stand up. And Conal Hession there at the back.
“Thanks to all the lads for all the effort they put in, they’ve travelled up and down the country, it’s unbelievable.”
And it’s far from over yet; Tooreen advance to an All-Ireland semi-final clash in three weeks’ time against either Corofin (Clare) or Castlelyons (Cork) who contest the Munster intermediate hurling championship final next Saturday.
