Camogs enjoy impressive win against Kildare

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Aimee McAleenan goes on the attack for Down camogs as Kildare’s Aoife Newman attempts to block her run. P81-040625

Glen Dimplex All-Ireland
Intermediate Championship
Group Two
Down 2-22 Kildare 0-11

By Séamas McAleenan

A HALF-TIME lead of 2-14 to 0-5 for Down in Saturday’s opening game in Group Two of the Glen-Dimplex Intermediate Championship at Liatroim felt surreal. After four seasons in the Senior Championship, they have faced a few half-time deficits like this and the same could be applied to their four seasons in Division One of the league that has now been extended to five. It has certainly been the pre-Covid era since Down won a game by a margin of 17 points and it could have been more emphatic. In fact, their management will know that the second half performance will not be good enough against their next opposition, Kerry, at the end of next week.

Joint captain Beth Fitzpatrick agreed. “We play Kerry next and I believe they won by 2-18 to 0-3 in Tralee against Carlow today. We have had a couple of battles with Kerry in recent years and they are a tough side. We drew in the last game in the league last year and that result was good enough to keep us up in Division 1B on score-difference and send Kerry down a grade. They might want to get their revenge on June 14th.”

Turning her focus to the game just played, the Clonduff club player registered two first half points before coming off injured midway through the second half. “I have a bit of a headache, from a couple of collisions. I should be ok,” she said of her injury. “We didn’t know much about Kildare. We haven’t played them recently and didn’t know what to expect from them. We couldn’t be complacent because we are playing a team from a lower league than ourselves.

Down Camog Beth Fitzpatrick

“We have put in a lot of hard work since the Antrim game (in the Ulster semi-final) and even the month before that. We have worked on teamplay, on our tactics during games and it was good to see that bearing fruit in the first half especially. We lost a bit of momentum in the second half. We were well on top at half-time. All teams are going to hit their purple patch in a game and that was when Kildare got theirs. But we came back near the end and got more names on the score-board. I think there were maybe nine or ten of us scored today and that’s important for building confidence for the next couple of games.”

Even during this season’s league campaign, the team faced criticism over their narrow scoring base. Those questions were answered over the first half-hour with all six forwards and midfielder Sophie McGrath all registering points, many of them top drawer scores from distance. A prime example came in the first three minutes when Saoirse Sands, Beth Fitzpatrick and Sara Louise Graffin all pointed from around 40 metres out.

Although Sarah Lavin and Louise Murphy responded with equally impressive scores a few minutes later, Down went 0-6 to 0-3 ahead by the end of the first quarter with points from Paula O’Hagan, Fitzpatrick and Aimee McAleenan. Kildare’s sole response came from a free from Caoimhe Ní Bhuirceal. Down then delivered blows to leave the visitors on the ropes. They scored 2-5 without reply inside seven and a half minutes.

Paula O’Hagan set the tone with her first two frees of the day. She fired over the first for a point and then drilled the second, just 30m out, to the Kildare net. Sophie McGrath, Saoirse Sands, Aimee McAleenan and Dearbhla Magee quickly fired over points and seven different players had now registered scores.

An eighth arrived when Orlaith McCusker burst through and had a chance of a point. Her shot skidded high off her stick and landed short. However, Kildare didn’t deal well with it and McCusker’s Clonduff team-mate, Sara Louise Graffin, robbed possession and fired low across goal from an acute angle for her team’s second major.

Late in the first half, Ní Bhuirceal contributed two frees, but Magee, Sands and Graffin all hit the target to leave 15 points between the teams at the change of ends.

Kildare made three substitutions at half-time and then Rebecca Duffy joined them five minutes later. They played with an extra defender and managed to settle the game down over the next 18 minutes during which there was just a pointed free registered at each end.

Down made a few mistakes during that period; overplayed passes, running into tackles, wrong decisions when in possession. But they then hit a patch of five points without reply – three from Paula O’Hagan and one each from sub Neisha McCullagh and Dearbhla Magee.

However, they will be disappointed that Kildare got in for five points during the last ten minutes, one each from Laura Edwards and Louise Murphy and three frees from Ní Bhuirceal who finished with seven points in total.

Down therefore have something to concentrate their minds for the next fortnight. But that first half should still stand to them as they face stiffer challenges along the route they hope will lead to Croke Park on August 10th.


TEAMS AND SCORERS
Down: P O’Hagan 1-6 (0-4 fs), SL Graffin 1-3, S Sands and D Magee 0-3 each, A McAleenan and B Fitzpatrick 0-2 each, S McGrath, N McCullagh and E Elliott 0-1 each.
Kildare: C Ní Bhuirceal 0-7 (fs), L Murphy 0-2, L Edwards and S Lavin 0-1 each.

Down: C Fitzpatrick, A McDowell, D Coleman, E Fitzpatrick, B Savage, C McGilligan, A Brown, O McCusker, S McGrath, A McAleenan, B Fitzpatrick, D Magee, P O’Hagan, SL Graffin, S Sands.
Subs: N McCulalgh for B Fitzpatrick (47), E Elliott for A Brown (48), G Cunningham for S McGrath (49), N McGrath for O McCucker (56), E Shields for A McAleenan (59).

Kildare: E Donovan, A Connaughton, S Dunne, S O’Brien, C O’Sullivan, S Mulligan, A Newman, H Davis, N Krahn, L Edwards, L Murphy, L Glynn, R Maguire, S Flavin, C Ní Bhuirceal.
Subs: S Coffey, M Maguire and S Buckley for S Dunne, C O’Sullivan and A Newman (all HT), R Duffy for L Glynn (35), M Donovan for S O’Brien (51)
Referee: C Goff (Wicklow).

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