Junior ‘B’ title puts the wind in Swinford’s sails
Swinford’s Thomas Tuffy scores a goal deep in the second-half despite the valiant effort of Ballycastle’s Keith Carden in Bank Holiday Monday's Treanlaur Catering Mayo Junior 'B' final at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park. Pictures: David Farrell Photography
Swinford held off a second-half rally from Ballycastle to win the Mayo junior ‘B’ football title yesterday (Monday) at a wind-swept Hastings Insurance MacHale Park.
Even with the gale-force wind, Swinford’s 21 points lead at half-time looked unassailable.
Mark Forkan had kicked the first of his three two-pointers of the first half inside 45 seconds and fired over another after points from Darren Campbell and Sean McDonagh, to move Swinford six ahead inside four minutes.
A third rocket from outside the arc by Forkan was converted four minutes later following a free by McDonagh, and after Thomas Tuffy’s first single of the day, McDonagh would then get in on the two-point act with a strike from downtown.
That made it 0-10 to no score with only ten minutes played.
The scores dried up for Swinford until the start of the second quarter, where the outstanding Dylan Toner got his first point before intercepting a Ballycastle loose pass on the 65-metre line, and he darted on before finishing into the bottom corner of the net.
Ballycastle were struggling to get their hands on the ball, much less create chances and score them. Their first shot at the posts was on 20 minutes through Shane Grier, which dropped into the hands of Swinford goalkeeper Emmet Peyton.
Forkan, Kevin McDonagh and Thomas Tuffy extended Swinford’s lead further before clever play by Kevin Healy and Shane Maughan set up Fergal Forde to split the posts for Ballycastle’s first score on 28 minutes.
But Swinford would finish the half as they started it. After Sean McDonagh sent over his fifth point of the afternoon, he then struck a lovely two-pointer to make it 1-19 to 0-1 at the interval.
Ballycastle looked to spark the unlikeliest of comebacks and ten minutes into the second-half, it looked on. Sam Kelly struck over his side’s first two-pointer before Lorcan O’Donnell found the net with a clever finish over the head of Peyton.
Sam Kelly then struck another two-pointer, this time from a free after Peyton failed to release the ball in time after Kelly was fouled. Swinford appeared to be panicking and with ten minutes to go, the gap was down to seven thanks to a pair of points from Finn McDermott Cox, two-pointers from Eoin McDonnell (a free) and Kevin Healy, and a single placed ball from Sam Kelly. However, Swinford would finish the game with a late flourish.
Dylan Toner got their first point of the second-half on 58 minutes before Thomas Tuffy was teed up by Sean McDonagh for their second goal to seal the title, with late scores by Kevin McDonagh, Michael Prendergast and Sean McDonagh putting a gloss on the finish.
“We looked at this when we got knocked out of junior ‘A’, that we stick together now for the last few weeks. We were wanting to kick on for this and use it as a stepping stone for next year and I think it'll give us a great boost going into next year,” said Swinford captain Jack Ferguson after the game.
“We said there at half-time that it's going to be a completely different game. There was a strong breeze out there and there was a lot of two-point threats on their side.
“We let them in for about 10 minutes. We were sort of panicking, but we managed to reset ourselves again and went back out again and grabbed a hold of the game and kicked on.
“We've a lot of young lads there on that team there and a lot of them are still under-21s. It’s about bringing them through now into the senior team the next few years and hopefully now, next year will be a different story.”
