Front row, left to right: Liam Quinn, Donnachta McCauley, Noah Coughlan, Jason Lawless, Darragh Mulchrone.
Middle row, left to right: Luke O'Donnell, Tadhg Daly, Tom Cox, Jamie Durkan, Felix Zeray, Robbie Murphy.
Back row, left to right: Pat Mulchrone, Mairead Durkan, Barry Murphy
Missing from photo: Cian Moran and Jason Feehan.
While we lost our three games in the annual Balla blitz today, we weren’t far off winning all three of them either! Our first game was against Mayo Gaels. Seemingly shocked after conceding a few early scores, we rallied and before conceding two soft goals in the final minute, we trailed by only three points.
Our second game against Breaffy followed a similar pattern, four points being the margin at the end. However, by the end, our boys were settling into the competition.
Match three - our final game - saw us up against Parke. This time we started brightly, scoring an early goal and a couple of points. As the game went on, Parke ate into our lead and narrowly emerged as winners, despite our scoring a late goal.
The loss of all three games doesn't tell the full story, however. We took on three senior clubs today with only seven of our older boys and five U9s. We competed with some of the strongest clubs in west Mayo and on another day, as previously mentioned, we could have won all three games had things gone our way. The younger lads deserve particular mention as they all took their opportunities to shine when they came their way. This was an encouraging day for our club and all players should - as their coaches did - take heart from three fine performances.