Archive News
Poor fare as Annaghdown end Barna’s dreams
Date Published: 07-Jul-2009
THE team that couldn’t score for the opening 20 minutes beat the team that couldn’t score for the last 28 minutes of the second half and the first 16 minutes of extra time.
Sounds dire? It was. Both Annaghdown and Barna had two half chances each to win this Claregalway Hotel Senior Football Championship clash in the dying moments of normal time at Pearse Stadium on Saturday evening, and although neither really deserved to win it in 60 minutes, more’s the pity one of them didn’t and put everyone out of their misery.
Instead we were ‘treated’ to two ten minute periods of extra time in which Barna were strung-out and couldn’t keep pace with the greater fitness levels of Annaghdown who outscored the Gaeltacht side
by 0-4 to 0-1 and deservedly progressed to the quarter-finals.
‘Puke football’ might be overstating it, but Saturday’s match was poor fare with both sides incapable of scoring for long periods and struggling with the basic skills of the game.
True, the heavens opened and it lashed rain at the start of the match which didn’t help, but rain can’t be blamed for incessant, niggly, unnecessary fouling, pulling and dragging and the inevitable squaring-up of players and mini-skirmishes after almost every indiscretion early on – the match didn’t boil over into anything nasty and the ‘afters’ never really threatened to venture out of the handbags category but it detracted from the spectacle nonetheless.