Defiant Pres. Athenry pull off stunning semi-final fightback
Pres. Athenry 4-10
CBS Kilkenny 2-12
PRES. Athenry produced one of the greatest comebacks in colleges’ history when they overturned an 11-point second half deficit against CBS Kilkenny to win an incredible and absorbing All-Ireland Post Primary Schools Senior ‘A’ hurling semi-final in Ferbane on Monday.
There are not enough superlatives to do the Connacht champions justice only to say this team has one hell of a big heart. In previous years, such a comeback would have fallen short – yet another moral victory would have been the extent of the prize – but these are different times in Galway hurling.
Between Jeffrey Lynskey’s minors and Micheal Donoghue’s seniors over the past number of inter-county campaigns, there has been this innate belief in and sense of purpose around the team ethos. This premise would seem to now have filtered down to grassroots level. For at no point did Pres. Athenry give up the chase on Monday.
It would have been easy to do so. Playing with a strong breeze at their backs in the opening period, CBS Kilkenny had built up a 10-point advantage by half-time and when the lively Jamie Ryan pointed after the restart to push his side further ahead, it looked all over for the Galway students.
The only ones who didn’t buy into that supposition though were the players themselves and over the next 25 minutes they would outscore CBS Kilkenny by 3-8 to two points as, in hurling terms, the world was turned on its axis and the sky came tumbling down. It was unbelievable.
No doubt, both teams found it difficult to cope playing against the strong breeze, particularly under the puckout where Pres. Athenry hammered their opponents in the second period. Brion Connolly, Cillian Lawless, the superb Conor Walsh, Conor Lee and Karl Conneely, who initiated the fightback with a rousing score, were among those to crucially pick off Kilkenny restarts in this time.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.