Lennon Cup Dee-light!

Ardee CC St Joseph’s 0-13 1-9

THEY were widely accepted to be the two best sides in the competition and Ardee CC and St Joseph’s CBS left no-one in any doubt of that fact in a thrilling Lennon Cup final on Thursday night at a bitterly cold Darver Centre of Excellence.

Joey’s Ryan Walsh opened the scoring and the reigning champions looked to be control early on. Shane Matthews did level things up for Ardee, but St Joseph’s put some daylight between the sides with points from Nathan Sutherland and Daire Nally before Walsh struck for the only goal of the game.

Jonathan Commins and Ciaran Keenan steadied the ship for Ardee and they would have been grateful to adjourn a goal down at the break 1-5 to 0-5.

Pre-match favourites, primarily down to their strong St Mary’s contingent, Ardee finally started to live up to their billing after the break with five points on the bounce without reply.

However, a three frees from Daire Nally edged the Joeys back in front and asked fresh questions of Ardee’s resolve.

But they came up with the answers as Carl Gillespie and Keenan snatched the lead again before Gillespie extended it to two.

Joeys responded one more time through Nally, but time ran out on the Drogheda outfit as they relinquished their crown to a deserving Ardee side.

ARDEE CS: Alan McGauley; Cian Taaffe, Cormac Raffety, Jack Grimes; Tristan Knowles, Donal McKenny, Gavin Kirk; Neil Kerr, Sean Sweeney; Jonathan Commins 0-3, Ciaran Keenan 0-4, Cathal Fleming Carl Gillespie 0-2, Trevor Matthews, Conor Gillespie 0-1, Shane Matthews 0-3. Subs: Andrew Bingham for S Sweeney, Mark Ward for J Commins, Carl Gillespie for C Fleming

ST JOSEPHS CBS: Niall McDonnell; Evin McConnon, David Lally, Ciaran McCann; Thomas Clarke, Alan Connor, Marty Walsh; Shane Hickey 0-1, Cathal Doherty; Rian Aikpitanyi, Conor Faulkner, Sean Healy; Daire Nally 0-5, Ryan Walsh 1-2, Nathan Sutherland 0-1.