No joy in All-Ireland titles bid

THE ladies of Killarney and the boys of Ballybunion returned to the Kingdom this week empty-handed having competed for All-Ireland honours in Kildare and Waterford.

Killarney’s Ladies Senior Foursomes team, the defending All-Ireland champions, fell at the quarter final stage at the Knightsbrook resort in County Kildare, while Ballybunion’s boys finished fourth at Tramore in the All-Ireland Inter-Club Boys Championship.

Beginning at Kinghtsbrook, Killarney fell to Shandon Park from Belfast in the All-Ireland quarter-finals, but the 3-0 defeat doesn’t really reflect the match as it was much closer than score-line would suggest, with all two of the three matches going to extra holes.

Amy Arthur and Alish Mulcahy were first into action for Killarney against Jennifer Fawcett and Jacqui Young and following a great contest, the Northern girls closed out the game on the seventeenth.

Mary Sheehy and Anne Duggan were the second Killarney pairing and after another really tight game, they went down on the second extra hole to Helen McCarthy and Paula McAtamney, while in the third game, Diane Nickels and Cora Concannon made it a clean sweep for Shandon Park with a nineteenth hole win over Tracey Eakin and Mary Geaney.

Shandon Park were then beaten in the semi-final by Roscommon, who went on to lose the final to Laytown and Bettystown.

In Tramore on Sunday, Ballybunion the Munster champions lined up against the three other provincial winners, Tullamore, Carrickfergus and Tuam in the inaugural All-Ireland final of the Inter-club Boys played under the stableford format, where a team of five compete with the best three scores counting to the team total.

Ballybunion were missing the services of Mark Galvin from their Munster title winning team following a wrist injury, but Five handicapper James O’Callaghan got them off to a solid start with an excellent 37 points.

However, the next two best counting scores were a pair of 32’s by Edmund Healy and Sean Malone to give an overall total of 101 which saw the Kerry club finish in fourth spot, nine points behind the winners Tullamore whose three best cards were 39, 36 and 35.

Carrickfergus were second with 40, 36 and 31 while Tuam were third with 39, 34 and 32.