Kenmare wins send An Ghaeltacht straight back down
COUNTY SFC RELEGATION PLAY-OFF Kenmare Shamrocks 0-18 An Ghaeltacht 2-7
NOT one full year after they won the competition to go into the County Senior Championship, An Ghaeltacht will return to the Intermediate Championship in 2019 after their predecessors as Intermediate winners, Kenmare Shamrocks, proved to have too much scoring power when it mattered in Saturday’s relegation play-off game.
Rob Ó Sé had made a great early impact for the West Kerry side with two early goals for a 2-2 to 0-3 lead but Sean O’Shea started to reel off the scores in a personal total of 0-11 (9f) as the game was level at half-time, 2-3 to 0-9. Shamrocks co-manager Sean O’Shea Snr felt that the timing of the goals was crucial to Kenmare turning matters around like they did.
“If they came in the last 15 minutes as opposed to the first 15 minutes I think it would have affected us more. It’s great for the club to have another year at senior level to allow us to develop our players at the highest level. Our ambitions this year were to stay senior and remain in Division Two of the County League. We sailed close to the wind with both but managed to get them done importantly as we’re looking forward to the likes of Dan and James McCarthy coming into our set-up from Minor level next year,” he said.
An Ghaeltacht lost PJ Mac Laimh to a black card two minutes before the break but despite disappointment at the result An Ghaeltacht selector Dara Ó Cinnedie felt the system proves whether Intermediate winners can compete at senior level or not.
“If you are good enough to be senior you should come through tests like this and the Intermediate winners should always find it tough coming up. Unfortunately, we carried no momentum from the Intermediate win through to the new campaign after losing All-Ireland semi-final at start of the year and it was one step forward and two steps back for the rest of the year. Rob Ó Se was a great outlet for us at full-forward but we had to move him back to midfield and it was like robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
A 17-minute period without a score in the second period proved detrimental to An Ghaeltacht as well with Stephen O’Brien proving to be very effective for Kenmare in the second period. David Hallissey and Kevin O’Sullivan had a great outing at midfield for the victors in holding off a late An Ghaeltacht rally for a five-point win.