Loss doesn't distract Larkin from how far Tooreen have come

It was on the back of superb second-half performances against Four Roads and St Gabriel’s that Tooreen reached a sixth straight Connacht intermediate hurling final and on the back of a massively below par second-half display upon which their hope of winning a fifth straight provincial title perished on Saturday afternoon.

Tynagh Abbey/Duniry of Galway were deserving winners at Hyde Park but with the margin between the teams standing at only two points, Tooreen will be full of regret. They led 1-10 to 0-9 at half-time but were outscored 0-10 to 0-4 in a second-half that saw them struggle to absorb the losses of Fergal Boland, Sean Kenny and Ciaran Finn to a variety of ailments.

Boland had been a totemic figure in the first-half but was replaced at the break having shipped a heavy blow to the head. And while the dual star returned to the fold for the final seven minutes of the game, Tooreen were unable to wrestle back the momentum from Tynagh Abbey/Duniry, managed by former Dublin manager Mattie Kenny.

“We started really well, I thought. We hit the ball into space, we were hurling really well and were four or five up at half-time. We were happy enough with that,” explained Tooreen manager Ray Larkin afterwards.

“Fergal got a bang on the head, there wasn’t even a card (nor a free). He wasn’t feeling great in the dressing-room so we had to take him off and it threw us a small bit.

“We came out in the second-half and they got the first couple of scores and pushed man-for-man on us then. We just couldn’t get going there in the second-half and the last five or ten minutes we couldn’t get a score at all, and hit one or two bad wides on top of that,” Larkin lamented.

Because of a clash in club colours the teams wore their respective county jerseys. Kenny’s men had led by three points after 10 minutes but a quarter hour of golden hurling saw Tooreen storm into a 1-9 to 0-7 lead, with Eoin Delaney lashing home a goal and two points in the first-half alone. Kenny Feeney, surprisingly handed the freedom of the park, also whipped over four long range points from play and with Tynagh Abbey/Duniry quite reliant on the placed ball accuracy of Shane Moloney for points, the Blue Devils were looking every inch the four-time defending champions.

And they were still three points to the good at the three-quarter stage, but were outscored 0-6 to 0-1 from there to full-time as time and again, they were unable to get the ball to stick in their full-forward line.

“We missed a couple of picks as well, which is unlike us,” Ray Larkin admitted. “But [the players] were under serious pressure. They had Micheál Power as a sweeper and we forcing it a lot of the time in the second-half. It was just one of those days. We had an off day and what can we do? It’s just one of those things.

“I’m proud of the lads for what they’ve done. They’ve been on the road for a long time now and a lot of them will be back in with the county in a couple of weeks, so they don’t get too much of a break.” 

In Fergal Boland and Sean Kenny’s second-half absence, Tynagh Abbey/Duniry took control of the middle third through the efforts of joint captain Johnny Conroy and Ben Moran, who scored three points between them for the day.

“[Fergal] got a fair rattle in fairness and got nothing for it but you can’t have sour grapes either,” reasoned Ray Larkin.

“Sean was carrying an injury going into the game so we opted to start him and see how he got on, instead of putting him in and maybe pulling up and using another sub. He wasn’t at one hundred percent.

“Ciaran Finn jarred his knee as well, so it’s just one of those things. But we have a good bench and we can build on that. It’s the first one we’ve lost in a while so if you don’t learn from your losses, you’re not going to learn at all.

“We’ll sit down again in a couple of weeks’ time and we’ll be back on the road again next year,” assured the Galway native who is also in sole of charge of the Mayo senior hurling team for 2025.

Tynagh Abbey/Duniry are the first club other than Tooreen to win the Connacht intermediate hurling championship since Oranmore Maree in 2018.

“Tynagh are one of the best teams to come out of Galway so far,” stated Larkin.

“You could see their experience, they’ve played senior hurling for years in Galway. They’re a big physical team and they’re well able to hurl and will have no bother up in senior next year. That’s a sign of how far Tooreen have come, to be able to match a senior team in Galway. We had to lose sometime and it’s just unfortunate it had to be today.”