Top Ten for Clonduff camogs

Clonduff celebrate their tenth camogie title after victory over Portaferry.

Down Senior Camogie Championship final

Clonduff 1-13 Portaferry 1-3

By Séamas McAleenan

CLONDUFF are back at the top in Down camogie. On Saturday the girls from Hilltown collected their tenth title in a windy Kilclief, after controlling the decider from start to finish.

Indeed, but for some wayward shooting in the difficult wind blowing diagonally towards the lough shore, they could have won much more comfortably.

In 2007 when they broke Liatroim’s sequence of 16 successive titles, Fionnuala Carr, her sister Sara Louise and Paula O’Hagan contributed a goal and eight points. The experience of this trio as well as their scoring return of ten points drove their team on Saturday with Orla Gribben, a veteran of nine title wins, hitting 1-2 as the Shamrocks again succeeded Liatroim as champions.

Portaferry simply never got to grips with the game. Erin Rafferty controlled the danger posed by Niamh Mallon and emerged with the Player of the Match award with the All-star nominee forced to forage for possession at the wrong side of midfield.

Saoirse Sands dropped into a sweeper role where she played well, but it ultimately meant there was little bite in the Portaferry attack.

As the game developed, they needed to take every scoring opportunity, and they didn’t, accumulating eight wides.

Clonduff also ran up ten wides including three from frees, perhaps Paula O’Hagan’s uncharacteristic misses indicating the problems with the wind.

Niamh Mallon pointed a free in the second minute, but O’Hagan replied with her only score from open play and in the eighth minute, Orla Gribben took a pass from Fionnuala Carr to drill home a goal.

Gribben’s goal came less than 60 seconds after Sara Louise Graffin had rattled a shot off the crossbar. From that point, Portaferry were in trouble.

Fionnula Carr, from a free and then from a sideline, helped Clonduff extend their lead to 1-5 to 0-1. Their opponents were struggling to gain possession in the scoring area and looking for frees to get back in the game.

Then in the 19th minute, they were thrown a life-line with Mallon sending teenager Niamh Savage through for a neat finish past Cassie Fitzpatrick. But Clonduff regained control and finished the half strongly with two frees from O’Hagan and a point from Gribben.

Clonduff went in at the break with a lead of 1-8 to 1-1 that could have been greater.

In the full report read how Clonduff dealt with Portaferry’s second half response.