Our Division 5 Under-14 footballers (all Under-13) joined their Division 1 counterparts in the County Final after defeating St Mary’s Rochfortbridge after a great battle in Springfield on Thursday evening. The strong wind and cold made it a difficult evening for football. Shamrocks enjoyed the benefit of the wind in the first half and held an interval lead of 2-3 to 0-3. It hardly seemed enough given the conditions. 

Scores were hard earned as both teams were strong in defence. After 10 minutes, Matthew Leavy scored a great individual goal after soloing from midfield. He also added a point from play as did Tom Frayne to give Shamrocks a five point lead.  The impressive Ryan Kelly pointed from a Rochfortbridge free before Tom Frayne crashed a shot off the crossbar; he then combined with Matthew Leavy to score Shamrocks second goal to send Shamrocks into a seven point lead after  20 minutes (2-2 to 0-1).  Before the break Ryan Kelly pointed twice from frees and in between Adam O’Donoghue had Shamrocks final score of the half. 

Shamrocks introduced Regan Moore and Seaghan Óg Collins at the interval and moved Harry Gavin outfield. Harry had played a very solid game between the posts in the first half and centre-back Liam Redden took Harry’s place. 

St Mary’s controlled the third quarter and Dylan O’Reilly began the comeback with an early point. In the 42nd minute, Ryan Kelly again pointed a free; the sixty seconds that followed appeared to be crucial as from the restart Tadhg Connolly, another very impressive player pointed. The restart from this score was gathered by Oisín Thornton who also pointed and again from the restart Óisin collected and this time shot to the net to give St Mary’s the lead for the first time (2-3 to 1-7).

At this stage, Shamrocks revealed their battling qualities and eventually lifted the siege and a second Matthew Leavy goal regained the lead in the 54th minute. A Ryan Kelly free reduced the lead to the minimum. A great bit of combined play between Tadhg Connolly and Seaghan Óg Collins ended with the latter kicking a neat point. Crucially Rogan Moore who had joined the attack won the restart and kicked a valuable point.  Shamrocks again won the restart and Seaghan Óg Collins cut in along the end line and scored one of the points of the evening (A touch of class but then his grandfather’s football repertoire included pointing a 45 with his bare foot when playing for St Mary’s back in the day when the football was a ton weight!). St Mary’s mounted a few late attacks but the Shamrocks tackling was excellent and when St Mary’s engineered a shot on goal, Liam Redden produced an excellent save.

Mullingar Shamrocks now meet St Loman’s in the Division 5 County final. 

The finals will be special occasions for the Moore family as Rogan follows in the footsteps of his grandad Ned and father Keith who also played with Mullingar Shamrocks in Under-14 County finals. 

And of course all played in the full back line. A nice bit of family tradition.

Mullingar Shamrocks: Harry Gavin; Ryan Kelly (Conor Hogan), Cian Gavin, Daniel Conaty; Dylan O’Reilly, Liam Redden, Ethan Nally; Nathan Naughton, Oisín Thornton: Tadhg Connolly, Matthew Leavy (2-1), Adam O’Donoghue (0-1); Ainle Smith (Rogan Moore, 0-1), Tom Freyne (1-1), Cillian Keegan (Seaghan Óg Collins, 0-2)