The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Three of four semifinal spots taken
FOR Causeway it had to have been a bitter pill to swallow and that’s putting it mildly. This one is going to stick in their craw for some time to come. It was there for them. They could practically taste it. The maroon and white had one foot in the semi-final before Gary O’Brien wrenched it all away from them with a last minute goal
“To be quite honest I’m quite devastated by it, there’s no doubt about that,” Causeway chairman John Joe Delaney reflected.
“It was a game that, there’s no doubt in my mind, we should have won. I thought even as a Causeway man that Mikey Boyle was rather unjustly dismissed, even though I’m not privy to the exact details of his dismissal, but I think from there most Causeway people and most neutrals would have expected us to go on and push things on from there, which we just failed to do.
“It’s as simple as that. We went in at half-time seven six down having played against the breeze, we came out in the second half and scored little or nothing having played with the wind, so obviously I’m pretty disappointed.”
As for the notion, expressed by a number patrons in Stack Park after the match, that Ballyduff had pulled off an act of daylight robbery, Delaney is dismissive.
“I don’t call it daylight robbery by Ballyduff,” he said straight up.
“I’ve great admiration for Ballyduff. They make the absolute most use of the resources at their disposal. People like yourself have been writing for years about the resources we have at our disposal and if they’re there, we don’t seem to be making massive use of them.
“I think fair play to Ballyduff the better team on the day won. They made fantastic changes, took a man off, brought him back on and he stuck the ball in the net. Like I said I’ve great admiration for Ballyduff.
“I was standing up on the terrace yesterday and I was saying to those around me there’s a goal in Ballyduff, but the stage at which they got it we should have been out of sight. We missed too many chances. We shot too many wides. We made too many mistakes. We were the authors of our own misfortune.”
The mood in the Ballyduff camp post-match, naturally enough, couldn’t have been any more different.
“It was a fantastic finish,” Ballyduff chairman Liam Ross enthused.
“We probably knew that there was a goal in us, but look we just made a switch and put Anthony [O’Carroll] back full-back and brought out Paud [Costello]. We knew Paud would be able to carry more ball and Padraig O’Grady was a big addition to just come back in there in the last two weeks. What can you say? Just delighted!”
Ross was well aware, however, that his men, for all their indefatigability, rode their luck a little at times.
“Causeway were going well, but Causeway hit a load of wides. They were inaccurate there in the second half and they probably should have put us away, but we just kept plugging away and pulling away and we won by a point. It was touch and go.”
The semi-finals now await and Ballyduff, as ever, will look forward with confidence.
“We’ll have to regroup now,” Ross said.
“We were going well in the County League and we lost our last two games, but we’re back in a County League final and now we’re in a North Kerry championship final and we’re in a county semi-final, which is great and hopefully we’ll have the two boys who were in the States back to us.”