Slaughtneil triumph in fiesty battle of wills with Kilcoo

KILCOO: S Kane; N Branagan, D O’Hanlon 0-4f, N McEvoy; E Branagan, A Branagan, D Branagan; F McGreevy, A Morgan; D Ward, P Devlin 0-5, 2f, 1x’45’, C Laverty; J Johnston, C Doherty 0-1, J McClean

Subs: M Devlin 0-1 for McEvoy (29), JJ McLaughlin 0-1 for McGreevy (42), D Kane for J Johnston (56)

SLAUGHTNEIL: A McMullan; P McNeill, B Rogers 0-1, K McKaigue; F McEldowney, C McKaigue, K Feeney; Patsy Bradley 1-0, P Cassidy 0-1; Shane McGuigan 0-4f, R Bradley, M McGrath 0-1; C O’Doherty 0-1, Sé McGuigan 0-1, C Bradley 0-2f

Subs: B Cassidy for C O’Doherty (51), G Bradley for McGrath (54)

Referee: Niall Cullen (Fermanagh) Attendance: 4,514

WITH the help of selector Willie Hampson, Slaughtneil made it out the right side of a scrap against Kilcoo in this Ulster Championship preliminary round game, with incident enough to keep us going for the whole Championship.

After the Down county final, Kilcoo manager Paul McIver suggested they didn’t get fair play in their last meeting against these opponents. “We feel, having analysed the Ulster final, there were a number of decisions that baffled us, we would love to show you them, if you ever wanted to see how some of the decisions were come to,” he said.

The fire was gently stoked during the week by Kilcoo selector Paddy Murray, who claimed Slaughtneil were adept at winning frees, something that greatly irked Slaughtneil manager John Joe Kearney, especially after he learned that Kilcoo had 27 frees to their 12 over the 70 minutes of football.

“I was watching up the line, the amount of barracking that the linesman was getting from the Kilcoo officials along the line was serious. They never left him,” was Kearney’s view after.

It led to a simmering opening with Dylan Ward being dismissed on nine minutes for striking Karl McKaigue.

As soon as that happened, Kilcoo retreated into an ultra-defensive formation and were intent on raiding Slaughtneil on the counter-attack, Paul Devlin contributing two fine points from long range in the opening quarter through such an approach.

Slaughtneil were patient but finding a way through required a lot of patience.

Kilcoo coughed up a few frees that were punished by Christopher Bradley and Shane McGuigan and Slaughtneil got lucky when efforts from play by Brendan Rogers and Padraig Cassidy were waved over when the view from the press box suggested they had curled wide.

The temperature in the stands was fairly lively anyway, but when a coming together of Kilcoo’s Ceilum Doherty and his opponent Paul McNeill resulted in an inexplicable red card for McNeill, it led to exchanges flung and on the line, Slaughtneil manager Mickey Moran was doing the universal sign-language for ‘diving’ while Kilcoo selector Sean Michael Johnston let him know what was on his mind with no sugar-coating.

At half-time with Slaughtneil 0-7 to 0-4 up, Kilcoo formed not one, but two huddles on either side of the pitch before going in. After a prolonged break, Kilcoo subs stationed themselves outside the dressing rooms to form a guard of honour for their own players.

Bizarrely, they remained there for Slaughtneil to walk out past. Slaughtneil players afterwards revealed that nothing was said at that point, but they were slightly amused by what they felt was a poor attempt at intimidation.

The game’s only goal came on 38 minutes. Slaughtneil had