Late O’Brien strike breaks Causeway hearts

COUNTY SHC QUARTER-FINAL Ballyduff 1-10 Causeway 0-12

SPORT is glorious. Sport is surprising and uplifting. Sport will put a smile upon your face. Sport will leave you in the pits of despair. Sport is frustration made manifest. Sport is cruelty itself.

And, that’s it, that’s the thing that brings us back time and again. The drama of it all. The human condition being played out in front of our very eyes. The contrast is born of its zero sum nature: for every winner there has to be a loser.

Last Sunday afternoon that loser was Causeway. That it happened at all – not to mention the way it happened – seemed particularly cruel. The maroon and white were the better team in the round.

They even had more scores than their opponents did – Causeway struck on twelve occasions, Ballyduff on eleven – but the failure to raise a green flag, the failure to capitalise on chances created cost them dearly.

When all’s said and done, Causeway were the authors of their own downfall. Over the hour they hit thirteen wides and spurned two goal-scoring opportunities (three if you include a second half speculative ball into the box that PJ O’Gorman spilled before later recovering).

Causeway finished the game with a 44% rate of return on chances created. Ballyduff’s 58% return was no better than average, but on this occasion that was just about sufficient. Any argument that Ballyduff pulled off an act of daylight robbery really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Ballyduff always had that capacity for a goal. Causeway knew they did. The failure to score one of their own, to open out that lead further than they ever did, was theirs alone. It wasn’t for lack of effort or intensity or any of that, it was mostly down to a lack of composure.

Take the ten minutes after the half-time break. Causeway started as if in a whirlwind. All action, all energy, thrusting forward. Amazingly not a single score accrued from all this activity. As a matter of fact Ballyduff got the half’s first score – a free from Padraig Boyle, which he earned for himself, on thirty nine minutes.

Even then the game looked like Causeway’s for the taking. Just minutes beforehand Mikey Boyle, the Ballyduff captain, walked the line on a straight red card seemingly for verbals with one of the officials.

Causeway had twenty minutes to turn around the two point deficit they held at that point and had an opponent in dire straits following the dismissal of their talisman. To give them their dues they made a really good stab at it... initially at least.

Over the following ten minutes John Brouder’s men hit five points unanswered – points from Mark Murphy, the ever-impressive Keith Carmody, Colum Harty and Billy Lyons – to open up an advantage of three points.

With ten minutes to go they needed to ram home their advantage. Instead it was a high water-mark. A couple of Padraig Boyle frees reduced the deficit to just one, before Lyons pointed on fifty eight minutes to re-establish a two point cushion.

All the old cliches are true – it is the most dangerous lead in a game of hurling as Causeway would soon discover to their cost. Gary O’Brien, who had been taken off fifteen minutes before, had just re-emerged as a replacement for Liam Boyle and, then, with his first touch of the ball slammed it to the back of the net.

Padraig O’Grady provided the pass across the face of goal and O’Brien pulled upon it expertly to raise the roof in Stack Park. Even then the drama wasn’t at an end. With four minutes of injury-time both sides had chances.

Padraig Boyle missed a scoreable free and then, as if to underline the point that Causeway were the authors of their own misfortune, Billy Lyons hit wide with virtually the last puck of the game.

Naturally enough credit must go to Ballyduff for this coup. If any club was going to pull it off it was Ballyduff, they have that belief. Simply put they’re never beaten. All that said the story of Sunday afternoon is the story of Causeway’s torment.

They did so much right. Their full-back line stood up really well to an aerial barrage in first half and they wouldn’t have been at all disappointed to be just a single point down at the break – six points to seven – with the breeze to come in the second half.

Still Ballyduff are Ballyduff as the saying goes. They got the absolute most out of themselves in really difficult circumstances. It’s the sort of victory that can kick-start a season in a major way.

Certainly Bobby Thornhill’s men have problems, but with Jack Goulding expected to be back for the semi-final improvement is possible. Alas Mikey Boyle’s straight red card and likely suspension could prove hugely costly in a repeat of last year’s final with Kilmoyley.

That game is going to be tough as hell – just the way they like it.

BALLYDUFF: PJ O’Gorman, Padraig O’Grady, Eoin Ross (0-1), Cathal Kearney, David Goulding, Paud Costello, Ally O’Connor, Paul O’Carroll (0-1), Anthony O’Carroll, Padraig Boyle (0-5, 3f, 2 ‘65), Aidan Boyle (0-1), Liam Boyle (0-1), John Hussey, Gary O’Brien (1-1), Mikey Boyle Subs: Jack O’Sullivan for G O’Brien, 45, Thomas Slattery for P O’Carroll, 49, G O’Brien for L Boyle, 59

CAUSEWAY: Tadhg Flynn, Mark Murphy (0-1), Jason Diggins, Bryan Murphy, Evan Murphy, Jason Leahy, Tommy Barrett, Anthony Fealy, Keith Carmody (0-5, 2f), Billy Lyons (0-3), Tommy Casey (0-1), Colum Harty (0-2, 1 ‘65), John Mike Dooley, Muiris Delaney, Stephen Murphy Subs: Gerard Leen for T Flynn (inj), 19, Stephen Goggin for M Delaney, 55, Brandon Barett for A Fealy, 63

REFEREE: Joe Larkin (Cork)