Heartache for Tooreen as Castle’ crush All-Ireland dream
It had the potential to be their finest hour and yet Saturday turned into one of Tooreen’s most painful afternoons, as they saw a golden opportunity to reach a second consecutive All-Ireland intermediate club hurling final slip from their grasp.
It’s a sign of how far Tooreen have come that they should be so bitterly disappointed to lose to a Cork team of Castlelyons’ quality; the Mayo representatives were much the better team for three-quarters of this match but saw all their fortune turn on the concession of a slobbery 48th minute goal.
The scorer, Anthony Spillane, was making his sixth return from Dubai in eleven weeks to play for his club, but having scored three goals in Castlelyons’ Munster final victory, this wasn’t only his first score of this match, but he was the first of his side’s forwards to manage a score from play, such had been the tenaciousness of Tooreen’s defending.
The 1-12 to 0-13 defeat will be especially hard for the Blue Devils to swallow, as they had left a host of chances behind them to be even further than 0-8 to 0-5 ahead after 37-minutes.
The teams were level on four occasions during the opening eighteen minutes but Tooreen outscored Castlelyons by 0-4 to 0-1 either side of half-time to put some distance between the teams. In fact, from the ninth minute until Anthony Spillane’s goal twelve minutes from full-time, the only thing the Cork side had to show for their efforts were Alan Fenton’s five pointed frees.
Featuring three defenders to have hurled for the Cork seniors, Castlelyons were asked some serious questions by Tooreen but crucially, the Connacht champions never looked like scoring a goal – as the Munster outfit oft times took to cynical means to halt the galloping Fergal Boland.
His brother, Shane, top scored for Tooreen with eight points, seven of them from frees, and there were singles for Fergal, Kenny Feeney, Liam Lavin, Eoin Delaney and Oisin Greally, but that all amounted to two points short of Castlelyons for whom Fenton scored 0-6 from placed balls and Anthony Spillane added a pair of late points to his late goal.
The winners of Sunday’s semi-final between Thomastown (Kilkenny) and Setanta (Donegal) will face Castlelyons in the All-Ireland final in Croke Park in January.
