Warriors bounce back to clip Eagles’ wings

MEN’S SUPERLEAGUE UL Eagles 66 Garveys Tralee Warriors 98

GARVEYS Tralee Warriors returned to winning ways in Limerick last Saturday with what was a most comprehensive and comfortable victory over UL Eagles in round eleven of the Men’s Superleague.

Having lost their previous two league games to the leaders Templeogue and second placed Swords Thunder the Tralee combination needed to get back on track to maintain their challenge for a play-off spot. Given that he has been unable to choose from a full squad since the opening day of the season, it has to some extent been a frustrating period to date for coach Mark Bernsen.

However, last weekend provided him with the opportunity to utilise all of the options available with Kieran Donaghy returning after missing out on the loss to Templeogue and Darragh O’Hanlon featuring in the action after a six-week absence due to a knee injury. It afforded the Coach more options in terms of player rotation and allowed players to play in more suitable and familiar positions.

In this regard he was able to interchange Dusan Bogdanovic and Goran Pantovic and play Donaghy in the number four spot. Indeed, he could afford the luxury of leaving Donaghy out of the starting five, and with O’Hanlon coming off the bench to good effect and the O’Sullivans Darren and Fergal continuing to make notable impacts there was a strength in depth that the squad lacked at times this season. Indeed, all eleven players featured at varying intervals in proceedings and contributed to the scoring tally, so in many respects it was a performance and a result with an awful lot of plus points.

At the outset Warriors were somewhat indifferent with Eagles shading matters scoring-wise throughout all of the opening quarter. They led by a single basket at the midway point, and despite a scoring spread of five different players, Warriors trailed 22-18 at the end of that first quarter.

However, with Donaghy influencing matters, Warriors picked up the pace considerably with Ryan Leonard simply superb, especially in offensive situations, and with Warriors having a distinct advantage physically they were able to capitalise regularly in post up positions. By half time, the deficit had been overhauled with Warriors enjoying a 46-37 lead at the interval.

Thereafter they went from strength to strength and consolidated their situation even further throughout all of the third to extend their lead to 7247 going into the fourth quarter. That final quarter featured some of Warriors emerging young talent with Paul McMahon, Gary Fernane and Gary Murphy chipping in with scores thereby sealing a victory that was really only pointing in one direction from an early stage in the second half.

It was Warriors highest score to date this season, and for the fifth time they limited the opposition to less than 70 points. The win, Warriors seventh, in the League keeps them in joint fourth spot in the table, alongside Killester and UCC Demons who were defeated by Belfast Star at the weekend. Templeogue, Swords and UCD Marian occupy the first three spots, but in terms of play-off positions Warriors have an advantage of three more wins above those just behind them, such as Moycullen and Belfast Star.

Coach Mark Bernsten was obviously pleased with the result given that it was achieved on the road, but also because he had been able to operate with a full strength squad at his disposal.

“Our defence, particularly our help defence, was good,” he said. “We had everybody available, everybody scored, we were as strong in the end as we were at the beginning. Darragh (O’Hanlon) is back, Fergal (O’Sullivan) did a lot of nice things, (Kieran) Donaghy had a few nice moments. We had some mismatches which we took advantage of, we were able to keep people fresh, got a lot of energy on the floor. Anytime you go on the road anything can happen, if you steal a game on the road it’s huge. It’s a good win to go into Christmas. We will train next week, then take a few days off, and go to the Blitz (Castleisland) on the 28th.” TOP SCORERS WARRIORS: R Leonard (27), K Donaghy (14), T Pemberton (12), D Bogdanovic (12) UL EAGLES: R Wilson (25), J Dogbo (19) P McCarthy (9) WARRIORS next competitive outing is in the Premier Men’s competition at the Castleisland Blitz next Wednesday, with the participating teams being Swords Thunder, UL Eagles, Killorglin and Neptune. They play UL Eagles in their first game (1.10pm).

Their next Superleague fixture is home to UCC Demons on Friday, December 30 at 8pm.