Accurate Flannery helps Pearses to get over the line

Padraig Pearses 1-10Killimor 1-8

Alan Dooleyin Athenry

THOMAS Flannery played a captain’s role in helping Padraig Pearses claim the Finnerty Plant Hire Galway Intermediate hurling Championship, scoring three points late in the game to help his side see off the challenge of Killimor and earn a return to the senior ranks at a bitterly cold Kenny Park, Athenry on Sunday.

Andrew Keary’s goal six minutes from time had Killimor within a single point of the Gurteen/Ballymacward men and a replay loomed large once more for two clubs who famously needed three finals to separate them at this grade almost twenty years previously.

As in 1991, it was Pearses who prevailed in the end, as Flannery’s salvo ensured Killimor were chasing a goal in the dying embers of this dour clash. Robbie Mitchell did have one final fling with a free from 30 yards out, but Padraig Pearses had already seen off a similar situation in their epic quarter final victory over Cappataggle and they held out once more to spark raucous celebrations.

While conditions were far from ideal as temperatures plummeted and a rain-soaked pitch hampered free-flowing hurling, this contest was by and large a forgettable affair which offered precious little to warm the heart, or hands, of any neutrals present who may have been expecting more from these two sides.

As Flannery stated afterwards, Pearses were expecting and had prepared for a physical encounter and Killimor duly turned it into one. Critically, though, in Cyril Donnellan Pearses had the one player who could elevate the tone of the game, even if only sporadically, and his second half goal gave his side the lift they needed to get themselves over the finishing line.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.