Killimordaly set to shade the verdict in fascinating final

STEPHEN GLENNON

KILLIMORDALY and Moycullen – one of the more interesting and novel intermediate final pairings for some time – will meet in what promises to be a well-attended county championship decider at Kenny Park, Athenry on Sunday (2pm).

In many respects, Moycullen, contesting their first intermediate final since 1964, have been a breath of fresh air to local hurling this year, scalping pre-championship favourites Killimor and Cappataggle in the quarter-final and semi-final respectively.

“There is a lot of excitement, with a lot of flags and banners up around the village. It is great to see,” beams Moycullen boss Fergal Clancy, who agrees that with Micheal Breathnach to contest the Junior ‘B’ decider next week – a title Barna/Furbo claimed in 2010 – hurling in West Galway is on the rise. “And you even had Rahoon/Newcastle winning the [County Intermediate] League a couple of weeks ago. So, it is great for hurling this side of the county.”

While many pundits, since their defeat of Cappy in particular, have been waxing lyrically about Moycullen’s rise, Clancy says that victory came as no surprise to him or his players. “To be honest, we had played Cappataggle in a challenge game a couple of weeks previously and we had learned a lot, even though we had not a very strong team out on the evening and we made a lot of simple mistakes.

“They [Cappy] were going fairly well at the time, but we knew when we had our full team out it would be a completely different story. So, we had nothing to fear. Also, a lot of people, outside ourselves of course, had under-written us so, really, we had nothing to lose.”

In the end, Moycullen claimed the spoils on a scoreline of 1-14 to 1-11, with Phillip Lydon netting the vital goal to catapult the Gaeltacht outfit into the intermediate final – and within touching distance of senior hurling for the first time since they were relegated from the upper echelons in 1979.

“At the start of the year, we set out to go senior and we believed – and still believe – that we can. So, there has already been an expectation on our team from ‘Day 1’ and we don’t feel that pressure is any different on us going into the final,” says Clancy.

“Killimordaly, though, have been up and down from senior in recent years, so I would say there is probably more pressure on them going into the final. Of course, a lot of people have said that we have done well [to get this far], but as a group ourselves – as a team – we are going all out to win on Sunday.”

No doubt, they have the capability, underlined by a campaign that has only been blemished by that opening day 2-11 to 1-12 defeat to Mullagh. To the fore to date has been centre-back Mark Lydon, wing-back Tomas Higgins and midfielder Eanna Noone, who has been clinical, especially from placed balls, in the knockout stages. In attack, Vinnie Faherty, Niall Mannion, Conor Bohan, Phillip Lydon and Christopher Hurney have all shown an eye for the target.

In this respect, Killimordaly have also been impressive and, indeed, they do boast a better scoring average than Sunday’s opponents, tallying 1-15 or 2-12 a game to Moycullen’s 1-13. By the same token, they have also been conceding more on average – 1-12 to Moycullen’s 1-9. Killimordaly manager Tom Monaghan admits he is wary.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.