History Makers

My sons and I have been following our local Gaelic Football team Moycullen all year and last month they won the Galway Senior Championship for only the second time ever. This was huge for the club, who have had players playing with Galway over the years, but never won the Galway club championship. Usually when you win the club championship, you progress to the provincial championship and if you win your provincial title, you get a chance to contest the All Ireland semi final.

Unfortunately for Moycullen the 2020 championship was cut short, so they never got the opportunity to contest Connacht and see of they could progress beyond Connacht.

This year the lads got the chance to compete in Connacht and dispatched their first opponents Westport in some style on a scoreline of 3-18 to 1-11.

This Moycullen team have serious talent and boasts 4 county players. Next year I suspect that there will be more, with Peter Cooke a certainty for a call up in my opinion and other players also doing everything they can to turn Padraic Joyce's head.

After the impressive victory over Westport, Moycullen were firm favourites with the bookies to beat Strokestown of Roscommon with Paddypower giving odds of 1/14 on Moycullen winning. It's rarely that straight forward and so it proved last week, with Strokestown giving us a right good scare.

Here is how the teams lined out on a cold and windy afternoon in Tuam.

Wastefull

Strokestown did not look like the underdogs in the opening 10 minutes, as they scored the first four points to race into an impressive four point lead, which must have stunned the Moycullen players and management.

Moycullen eventually found their feet and started to eat into Strokestown's lead as the half wore and soon got back to parity at 4-4 and tacked another score on before the half time whistle making it 0-5 to 0-4 at half time.

Moycullen were far from their best and missed lots of easy chances and accumulated a lot of wides. They would need to up their game im the second half to win this one.

A terrible half of football

I can scarely remember seeing a worse half of Gaelic Football in all my years, the fans watched as each team hit wide after wide and amazingly only three scores were registered in the entire second half.

Here is Peter Cooke lining up one of many frees he missed when he came on.

It wasn't just Peter that struggled on the day though, Moycullen's star player Dessie Conneely also racked up lots of wides. The game ended 0-7 apiece in the end and it went to extra time.

Strokestown should have taken their chance during normal time, as once Moycullen regrouped, then they came out in the first and second halves of extra time and kicked on to win. They managed 2-1 and Strokestown didnt score at all, which meant the match finished:

Moycullen 2-8 Strokestown 0-7

Moycullen now march onto the Connacht final for the first time in their history and they have a great chance to make it to an All Ireland semi final which would be collosol for the club.

These photos are all my own

Thanks as always for stopping by everyone.

Peace Out