Éire Óg Greystones
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Weekly Notes - 11th October 2006

The scene of their victory was the beautifully manicured St. Pats, Wicklow (we congratulate them on winning the Senior Championship) pitch in Dunbur. Saturday week was a day of strong southerly winds which blew uninhibited towards the town end of the grounds. In the first half we played against that wind and our policy had to be one of containment. Balls peppered the Éire Óg goal area and we depended on the occasional breakout to register on the scoreboard. During this period our defence, particularly the full-back line of Daniel Keane, Man of the Match Karl Manahan and Alan Joyce (who initiated the movement which culminated in Paul Dunne's goal) coped heroically with this elements-assisted pressure and managed to keep the interval deficit to a mere 2 points. The margin could have been 5 but for the timely deflection, at the expense of a '45', of a net-bound ball by a coming-from-nowhere Donal Minogue just on the stroke of half-time. A Bray point immediately on resumption made a slight dent in the quiet confidence which our half-time position had engendered. Thereafter Éire Óg's grip on the game began to tighten but its progress towards firmness remained painfully slow until the arrival of Sam Thompson who synergised with Simon Sweeney in a "terrible two" combination on the left of the attack. Gary Dunne and Rory Doyle edged it against a strong Bray mid-field and Paul Dunne led by example in the forwards. Donal Minogue, Peter Burke and John Deeney played vital roles in curbing the Bray attack while Gary Elliot and Seán Ryder combined to produce the vital 1st goal.

The victory hopefully assuaged somewhat the undoubted deep disappointment of team captain, Daniel Wood at not being able to play because of injury. After the game the talk among spectators was of the high standard of the football and of the wonderful sportsmanship of all involved.

If we consider that in its most common usage the term "battling" implies a striving against some kind of adversity, its use in last week's Bray People headline to the account of the Éire Óg/Carnew Intermediate championship clash was somewhat inappropriate. It was Éire Óg that did the battling; they were the ones that fought back from a two goal to zero deficit to be pipped by a point. The game ended on the thirty minute mark precisely (stopwatch) - no injury time - with Darren Hayden in possession in an attacking position. If only………! Things being as they are, we have no choice but to accept that the Intermediate's championship odyssey is over for another year. A huge disappointment and difficult to accept when one reflects on the circumstances of the 8 point turnaround in the drawn game.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly the cause of our defeat in the replay. Was it that the morale of the team was adversely affected by the two early Carnew goals and by, what appeared at the time, to be a very serious injury to Kenny Naughton? Buíochas le Dia, Kenny's injury was not at all as serious as originally feared. We wish him a speedy recovery. There is a bit if irony in the fact that Kenny's injury could be seen as following directly from his wonderful equalising point in the first game - if there had been no point, there would have been no replay……! Or was it that the heavy underfoot conditions were not conducive to the playing of the more expansive game favoured by the younger, faster Éire Óg team? Or again, was it our naïve tendency to commit those foolish obvious indiscretions which refs seem to punish more readily than the more aggressive transgressions? Anyway lads, thanks for an enjoyable, admittedly at times heart-endangering, championship campaign.

A question on the rules. In the Éire Óg game and in the game that followed, a player taking a quick free deliberately kicked the ball with unbridled force at a retreating player (Paul Doherty's back - the spectators gasped at its ferocity - and a Kilcoole player's face). Such an act, in my opinion, constitutes an aggressive foul and should merit at least a yellow card and the nullifying of the free. Instead, in each case, the offending player was given the statutory meterage (yardage) in the direction of the opponents' goal.

Peil na n-Óg

An opportunity for 6-9 year olds to learn the skills and enjoy the beauty of Gaelic football protected from the vagaries of our weather. Training indoors Wednesdays 5.30-6.30pm 2euro per session.