Briscoe comes to the rescue for Mullagh in a niggly affair

Mullagh 0-13

Clarinbridge 0-13

BY and large the fare on offer in the Senior ‘A’ and ‘B’ championships so far this year has been of a high quality but that was far from the case in this fragmented Senior ‘B’ clash between Clarinbridge and Mullagh at Kenny Park, Athenry on Friday evening.

It finished a draw match and while the two teams put themselves in positions where they could secure both group points, neither showed they had the capability to win it. In the end, it was only the closeness of the contest in the concluding quarter that conjured up any measure of excitement among patrons.

The elephant in the room turned out to be the officialdom of the fixture, with umpires getting their signals crossed when adjudicating on scores and, at times, it bordered on farcical.

Both sides, more so Clarinbridge, were also not overly enamoured with the refereeing although in fairness to Adrian Mooney that was probably spawned initially out of the frustration in both camps over the umpires’ indecision on a brace of calls.

In general, the refereeing in the senior hurling championship has been very good – indeed, a number of referees have given an exhibition – and you’d be loathe to criticise any referee for a poor game. Consequently, Mooney should be afforded the benefit of the doubt.

For Clarinbridge’s part, their ire was arguably borne out of the fact that, having raced into a 0-5 to no score lead after just six minutes, they subsequently saw that fine work undone as they lost the free count six-one to Mullagh in the opening quarter.

It gave a platform to Mullagh to get back into the contest and by the break they had reduced the arrears to a single point, 0-9 to 0-8, which included five frees and two 65s from dead ball specialist Cathal Dervan. Niall Cahalan was Mullagh’s only contributor from play in the opening period.

By half-time, Clarinbridge were 11-5 down on the free count and this had extended to 16-8 by the end of the third quarter leading the ‘Bridge full-back Brian Burke to vocally air his views to the referee in front of the Kenny Park faithful. Their frustration was palpable.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.