The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
O’Caroll delight as Ballyduff bite back
WE’LL happily admit it, we didn’t see that coming.
It’s not even so much that we didn’t expect Ballyduff to win – they are Ballyduff after all and, as we said last week, with the experience they have they’re always going to be there or thereabouts – it was the manner of their victory that surprised.
Four goals in about six minutes is blitzkreig with a sliotar and hurl instead of a panzer. Causeway were visibly taken aback. To their credit they never gave up, battled to the last, but from about the eighth minute on it was largely academic.
Ballyduff selector Anthony O’Carroll was certainly chuffed to bits with how his side had performed.
It’d been a tough couple of weeks and months for the green and white and this was something like vindication.
“The papers were saying the legs were gone and they probably were there towards the end,” he said.
“But you see if hurlers can play hurling and you cut out the mistakes and limit the opposition to one goal and we had four goals in seven minutes. It wasn’t maybe the performance we expected, but we knew it was there.
“That was the motivational factor at half-time we’re still here, the legs are still here, we’re not written off yet. You have to respect them they’ve a lot miles on the clock and you know what they can give and they dug deep once more.
“Whether they can do it again we’ll have to see. We’re happy to be in the semi-final, we’re waiting for the draw now. There’s things to work on as well, we made mistakes, but we’re delighted.”
Ballyduff were wind-assisted a little in the first half, that might explain how much futher ahead of Causeway they appeared in the first half and might explain how Causeway more than held their own in the second.
“We were tired probably in the second half, Gary [O’Brien] had to come off Jap [Liam Boyle] had to come off. The breeze you have to take advantage of it, every ball was going to be pumped in to Padraig [Boyle] or Gary.
“We knew Padraig could do what he was doing, we knew he was dangerous, but it’s not every day you put four goals past Tadhg Flynn, but they were four good goals, five in the end.
“We had a plan and tactically it worked for us, get into it fast and play direct hurling. In the second half we were dilly-dallying when they lost the ball, you can’t contain that, we have to work on that now.”
Ballyduff now have a couple of weeks to try and get bodies right – Liam Boyle, who played a blinder, was an injury doubt all week; Padraig Boyle is just back from a cruciate; Aidan Boyle missed the game through injury; Barry O’Grady could only feature off the bench – making them potentially even stronger for the semi-finals.
“The ice packs are working wonders in Ballyduff,” O’Carroll said with a chuckle.
Their potential semi-final opponents will be wary.