Mitchels win 'B' title with A plus show
Castlebar Mitchels, 2024 Mayo Senior 'B' Hurling champions. Picture: Mayo GAA
A dominant second half display saw Castlebar Mitchels run away in the end over St Ciarans and win the Martin O’Malley Cup in Cong last Saturday afternoon.
St Ciarans led by four at the break but scored only two points in the second half, the last coming three minutes after the restart, as Mitchels, with John Kennedy, Bob Tuohy, Conor Murray and Colm Enright prominent, froze their danger man Luke Hurley out of the game in the second half while their own go-to forward Ryan Butler struck two goals in the second half.
St Ciarans narrowly won the decider last year in Westport and the game appeared like it would follow a similar pattern by the end of the first quarter. Frees by Hurley cancelled out scores by Bernard Kennedy and Butler, before Hurley and a great score by Peter Murphy put St Ciarans ahead 0-4 to 0-2 after nine minutes.
The wides began to creep up for Ciarans after that, with a tricky wind across the pitch picking up and Mitchels kept on Ciaran’s coattails through Pearse Murray and a pair of singles by wing-forward Colm Enright.
The momentum swung again in favour of Ciarans as Sean O’Donnell, two efforts by Hurley (one free) and a strike by Ronan Fallon from the halfway line saw them edge four ahead. That gap would remain until the interval as the sides would each convert two points apiece, with Lane and Murray striking for Mitchels while Hurley and Jack Doocey responded for Ciarans to leave 0-11 to 0-7 at half-time.
Both sides had a chance before the break to find the net. James Gallagher and Sean O’Donnell saw efforts for Ciaran’s blocked while Ryan Butler also saw a chance go wide, but the Mitchels full-forward would not have to wait long in the second half to find the net as John Kennedy’s free from the halfway line dropped to the Mitchels sharpshooter and he bundled it in.
Ciarans brought the gap back to three through Mark Jordan and Peter Murphy but it was all Mitchels from this point on. Backed by the breeze, two frees by Butler and one from play by Anthony Rowland drew Mitchels level. Once Colm Enright pointed his third on the day on 42 minutes, only one winner looked likely.
The Ryan Butler show took over from here as he punished cheap fouls given away by Ciarans with a trio of placed balls and he would score his second goal on 55 minutes, as he collected a short pass by Anthony Rowland and he would then send a piledriver past Kevin Duffy to put the game beyond all doubt.
Butler finished off his scoring with another two frees, with Lucas Kenny and John Kennedy, a free, rounding off the scoring. Tempers began to flare in injury-time as Castlebar Mitchels’ Alan Gavin and St Ciarans Jack Doocey were shown straight red cards for separate incidents, but they proved immaterial to the result in the end.
