Tale of two players

up nineteen frees in the game to Lixnaw’s five – but whatever else they were going to do they weren’t going to leave Stack Park wondering what if.

The one time they took their eye off the ball in the first half they were punished for it when Ricky Heffernan – having won a great puck-out on the forty yard line – got the time and space to power towards goal. That wasn’t a mistake they were willing to repeat.

When Jeremy McKenna made, like Heffernan for goal, Ballyduff – Pádraig O’Grady as a matter of fact – met him forcefully (though illegally). Better that and a yellow card than another ball in the back of PJ O’Gorman’s net.

This was Ballyduff at their pragmatic best. The quickest route to goal is long so they went long. They’ve got the two best ball-winning inside forwards in the game in Aidan and Pádraig Boyle so they used them.

At times you wondered were they overdoing it, were they becoming a little too predictable. The two goals which followed Boyle’s first soon answered that. Knowing what was coming was one thing, doing something about it quite another.

Though it felt like it at times, this wasn’t just the Aidan Boyle show for Ballyduff. Jack Goudling played a really fine game out around the middle of the pitch. Paud Costello blotted Shane Conway out of the game effectively.

Daniel O’Carroll gave a powerful performance from centre field and, then, at their time of need Mikey Boyle played a captain’s role for Ballyduff. After O’Grady’s dismissal (following a foul on Shane Conway who had got himself into a great position barrelling towards goal), Mikey dropped deeper and deeper.

By the end he was plucking balls from the air and driving out past forlorn Lixnaw players, desperate to do something, to do anything to get themselves back on terms with the blue bloods from over the road.

Lixnaw will certainly look back on this as an opportunity lost and not just because of the absence of their talisman Griffin from the mix. For all they did well – and they did plenty well – they simply lacked the killer instinct of Ballyduff.

When Ballyduff when down to fourteen men, Lixnaw didn’t push up on them nearly as aggressively as they might have done. It’s fair enough not to want to risk another Boyle goal down the other end, but when chasing the game as they were they needed to be bolder.

In the fifteen minutes after O’Grady was sent to the line Lixnaw outscored Ballyduff by just four points to three. Ballyduff’s defence wasn’t put under as much pressure as they could have been in that vital period of the game.

When Ballyduff got the

MAIN MAN

The official MOTM award went deservedly to Aidan Boyle, and one couldn’t dispute that particular decision inany way. His brother Mikey also made a notable impact asindeed did Daniel O’Carroll, while John Buckley,Ricky Heffernan, Shane Conway and Brendan Brosnan produced productive periods for Lixnaw. However, just like 2010 when hewas alsothe Man of the Match, itwas,again, the big man for the big occasion.

KEY MOMENT

Probably the foul on Jeremy McKenna when he looked certain to score a goal, ashe outpaced the defence inthe forty third minute. Agoal at that particular juncture would have brought his side to withinapoint, and, provided a real boostatacritical juncture in proceedings. One can onlyspeculate at this stage, but, a goal, if scored, might well have provided the springboard for success for Lixnaw.

TALKING POINT

The clubisall about family and many familieshave contributed to the success of Gaelic games throughout the land. Sunday was one of those occasions and special for the four Boyle brothers who added further to the spiraling tally of familygold. Mikeybecame thethird member to captainaChampionship winningside while Aidan was winning his second and the family’s third Man of the Match award. chance they went for the jugular and got the rewards for it... Lixnaw didn’t. That said they’re a side with a high percentage of young players. They’ll be back.

Brian McAuliffe who improved a lot between drawn game and replay will be back. Their captain John Buckley will be back. Jeremy McKenna who has a bit of a warrior about him will be back.

The wizard of last week, Shane Conway, will be back and John Griffin will be back there amongst them all again, ready to do a version of what Aidan Boyle did so memorably this time around.

In the meantime Ballyduff will rightly wallow in a famous and well-earned success. It puts them back where they feel they belong, on top with twenty five titles. One itch that remains to be scratched is the Munster intermediate championship.

They reached two finals in succession during their three ina-row domestic dominance and with a home semi-final a strong possibility (should Kanturk account for Tipp champs St Marys) they’re at least in with a shout of another final.

Would you put it past them?

Cliches are cliches for reason. They often contain a grain of truth. One of the greatest cliches in the GAA is that goals win games. Well if ever there was an example of that ringing true then it was in last Sunday’s county final replay.

If we’d told you before the game that Lixnaw would create more chances than Ballyduff – 29 to 27 – if we’d told you that Lixnaw would take a higher percentage of those chances than their great rivals did – 69% to 63% – then you would likely have assumed the green and gold were well on the road to victory. We’ve had imagined likewise ourselves.

After last weekend’s game we posited that to get over the line Lixnaw needed to improve here and there by a couple of percentage points and that’s what they did. Their rate of scoring return (despite hitting a couple of wides from placed balls in the first half) rose eight points from 61% in the drawn game.

As well as that they turned the tide in the primary possession stakes too. Ballyduff shaded them ever so slightly in that department the week before, but this time around Lixnaw emerged on top. The biggest area of improvement for them was on Martin Stackpoole’s puck-outs. Central to that was Ricky Heffernan, who on top of bagging a handsome total of

1-1 won an impressive six puckouts. Four of those came in the first half and most of those came during Lixnaw’s recovery drive following Aidan Boyle’s opening two-goal salvo.

For a time it seemed that Ballyduff would be overrun on the primary possession stakes, but when the need was greatest in the lead up to half-time Mikey Boyle stepped up to the plate in a major way, winning the last three Lixnaw puck-outs of the half. Until the point Lixnaw had claimed eight of their own in-a-row and eight from ten overall.

Another area that Lixnaw clearly targeted and Ballyduff were lax on was discipline. Lixnaw didn’t commit a foul until fully twenty seven minutes into the first half. Ballyduff by contrast were fouling with far too much regularity, by the end of the first half they’d fouled ten times to Lixnaw’s one and by the end of the game that was extended to a ninenteen-five lead.

Ballyduff picked up seven cards (six yellow, one red) and added together it could have proven very costly indeed. Mike Conway bagged nine frees remember and Pádraig O’Grady was sent off (both yellows came within minutes of each other) with fifteen to go. Boyle’s goals insulated them.

Mikey Boyle played a captain’s role for Ballyduff.. by the end he was plucking balls from the air