Northern rivals must go again after dramatic finale

You could sympathise with the confusion of Richard McKenzie who admitted he and his Bonniconlon teammates didn’t quite know what to think about their draw with Cill Chomáin last Saturday.

The underdogs led this game by six points yet had to fight from three points and a man down to secure another crack at winning the county junior football championship next weekend.

“We don’t know how we are to be honest,” McKenzie told Mayo GAA TV after Saturday’s clash at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park. He said that all things considered, the humour was quite good in the dressing-room.

“I think we got out of jail in a way but we kind of put ourselves in jail in the first-half. We were 32 minutes a man down but for 28 minutes before that we were playing the best football we have played this year.

“The pressure came on but to claw it back the way we did… I actually thought they were turning the screw on us in the middle of the second-half and we were coming under serious pressure. But we drew it back,” added McKenzie, introduced in the 58th minute when his team was still two points in arrears.

“[Cill Chomáin] could have won it at the very end. We’ll be very happy to go again next Saturday.” 

What annoyed Cill Chomáin sharpshooter Justin Healy was his side’s failure to close out the match. They had led 2-6 to 1-6 after 44-minutes, with Healy having scored 2-2 of that from play, but the Gaeltacht outfit didn’t manage to score again despite having an extra man advantage since Sean Neary’s dismissal two minutes before half-time.

“It’s a bit disappointing how we played it out towards the end, I thought our game management could have been a bit better, but we’ll take it, we’re back in a county final again next week so we’ll just have to get the bodies right, prepare, and we’ll go again,” remarked the full-forward.

“We had a bad start, they came out of the blocks absolutely flying it, we were caught on our heels a bit. We dug deep to get ourselves back in the game early in the second-half, we got a lead and probably should have built on it a bit more and unfortunately we let them back into it towards the end.” 

To have another chance to put things right is also something that Cill Chomáin joint-manager Nigel Reape is glad to embrace.

“Overall, initially you’d be disappointed because you gave away a two points lead close to the end but I guarantee you when I wake up tomorrow morning I’ll be delighted we’ve a county final to play again next weekend because we were so poor in the first-half it wasn’t funny,” said Reape frankly.

“Bonniconlon had all the advantage in the first-half, they were hungrier, they were playing better football.

The sending-off and Justin’s goal before half-time put the balance back in our favour and Justin’s goal before half-time.

But overall, disappointed obviously, but we’ll“We’ll expect to play better again next weekend so delighted to have gotten a second shot in that sense,” he added.

Bonniconlon, with one junior and two intermediate titles to their name, the last of those coming in 1997 (intermediate), held a 1-5 to 0-2 lead approaching half-time but conceded 2-3 without reply either side of the interval.

“I certainly thought at half-time that we probably should have had more return for the possession we had,” conceded manager Nobby McLoughlin afterwards, “and we had a bit of a poor start to the second-half but we clawed it back again and never gave up.

“This is the one thing about Bonniconlon, they don’t give up very easily and they know the game is 60 minutes and they try and play for 60 minutes.” 

McLoughlin was less than satisfied with the conclusion to the game however, despite his side scoring the last three points to force a replay. Referee Kieran Barnicle was in the spotlight for blowing his full-time whistle less than three minutes into stoppage time when four minutes had been indicated by the sideline official.

“We nearly pulled it out of the bag in the end,” said McLoughlin, “it’s just a pity that we didn’t get the extra time that I thought we deserved, especially when we had possession of the ball. We could have got a late score.”