Third-quarter scoring issues floor Moycullen’s title hopes

Tooreen 1-15

Moycullen 0-14

Darren Kelly in Bekan

A third quarter that only yielded two points was Moycullen’s downfall on Saturday as they fell to Mayo’s Tooreen in the Connacht Intermediate hurling final.

The west Galway outfit were aiming to bridge a 10-year gap for provincial silverware and looked on course early in the second half after points for Evan Kenny and Niall Mannion had them 0-10 to 0-8 ahead.

But Ray Larkin’s Tooreen outfit overturned that deficit thanks to Sean Regan’s 42nd minute goal. And like Ballinderreen and Kinvara before them, Moycullen became the third victims to this Mayo unit who will contest an All-Ireland semi-final in the New Year.

“Very disappointing,” acknowledged Moycullen manager Morgan Darcy afterwards. “Going in at half-time knowing the elements were in your favour at eight points apiece, you’d have a good feeling about that.

“ We came out and shot the first score of the second half. We went actually two points up at one stage. Things were looking promising, looking up.  But credit to Tooreen, they’ve great athletes in their team. We knew we couldn’t underestimate their ability from the word go.

“Maybe we let our guard down a small bit, allowed them onto the ball a bit too much and they’re just very confident on the ball and they played excellently,” said Darcy.

This decider was expected to be tight and nobody believed Moycullen would easily take out their Mayo counterparts. The boys in blue fielded two players who made this week’s GAA Champion 15 (David Kenny and Cathal Freeman) and delivered a combined 1-47 in successive outings against Roscommon’s Athleague and London’s Robert Emmets.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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