Gusserane out-point promoted Rathnure
GUSSERANE RATHNURE 0-12 0-9
GUSSERANE O’RAHILLY’S began their campaign in Group B of the Top Oil Intermediate ‘A’ hurling championship with a solid win over Rathnure in very blustery conditions in Bree on Saturday.
The strong right-to-left wind was always likely to make this a game of two halves, but Gusserane managed to put just enough distance between themselves and Rathnure as they benefited from the wind in the opening half.
Given the strength of the gusts helping the O’Rahilly’s in the early exchanges, Rathnure actually must have been pretty happy with how the scoreline was looking at the 20-minute mark.
Three Syl Barron frees had kept them to within one score of their opponents, who had seen Gavin Sheehan (twice), Jack Culleton, Mark O’Neill, Seán Ryan and John Roche all raise the white flag.
The ten minutes before the break proved to be the key period for Gusserane, as they scored four unanswered points through Ryan, O’Neill and Roche but were denied a goal in strange and what might have been very controversial circumstances had Rathnure staged a second-half fightback.
With four minutes remaining in the period, Ryan found space and rocketed a strike into the top corner of the goal, only for the ball to rebound back out off of the metal frame inside the goal without either referee or umpires spotting that the effort had actually crossed the line.
Even though Gusserane started the second-half a goal worse off than they should have been, they battled hard and were able to keep Rathnure at arm’s length for the duration of the game.
They only scored twice themselves, both from Ryan, but crucially they only allowed Rathnure six points with the wind.
Barron fired over three more before last year’s Junior champions registered a second scorer when Declan Foley smashed over a glorious point from distance.
Seánie Redmond reduced the deficit to four moments before Micheál Ryan made an important albeit unorthodox save from a long Teddy O’Connor ball in.
Michael Martin was on hand to make it a one-score game with just two minutes of normal time remaining but, with large numbers back defending behind the ball, Gusserane prevented an all-important Rathnure goal in the dying moments.
Gusserane take on Liam Mellows next weekend while Rathnure will look to get off the mark against Craanford.
Gusserane: Micheál Ryan; Jamie Sheehan, Ken Cahill (capt.), Liam Dillon; Páraic Conway, Gavin Sheehan (0-2 frees), Tommy Ryan; Adrian Redmond, Mark Kehoe; Mark O’Neill (0-2), John Roche (0-2), Jack Culleton (0-1); Sam Wall, Gary O’Grady, Seán Ryan (0-5, 4 frees). Subs. - Darragh Doyle for Kehoe (39), Kevin O’Donohoe for O’Grady (43), Mark Rossiter for Ryan (50), Jack Burford for Culleton (57).
Rathnure: Seán Nolan; Phillip Redmond, Teddy O’Connor, Stephen Martin; Ben Ronan, Declan Foley (0-1), Alan Ronan; Michael Martin (0-1), Paul Murphy; Kyle Martin, Fran Murphy (capt.), Syl Barron (0-6 frees); James Flynn, Seánie Redmond (0-1), Aodhán Foley. Subs. - Dylan Hogan for Foley (31), Eoin Byrne for Martin (45).
Referee: Ian Plunkett (Marshalstown-Castledockrell).