Kilglass emerge unscathed from red mist

Kilglass Gaels - 2-11

St. Barry’s - 0-8

Dermot Hughes Cars Junior A Football Championship Quarter-Final

It has been over half a century since the death of Patrick Kavanagh — esteemed novelist, poet and player/treasurer with Inniskeen GAA Club. It’s unknown if the famous Monaghan native ever visited Kilmore in North Roscommon. Yet his fingerprints were all over Sunday afternoon’s junior quarter-final clash between Kilglass Gaels and St. Barry’s, as the two neighbouring clubs played out a contest that seemed to be about so much more than just the right to play St. Michael’s in a championship semi-final.

Kavanagh wrote of Homer’s ghost, telling him how he made the Iliad from a local row. Quentin Tarantino or the Coen Brothers would surely fill their boots adapting the story of this fight on 25 roods of grass to the big screen, where they could strip it away from the context of the Roscommon club football scene, and instead focus on how local tensions underpinned everything that unfolded.

We won’t spoil the plot of the movie too much, but a player’s wedding late last week led to a request to move the game, and while there are very different versions of the chain of events leading up to Sunday’s throw-in, depending on your source of information, one side was very unhappy with having to play at the appointed time.

Perhaps that was the reason, or perhaps the local rivalry aspect at play here was such that this game was a tinderbox that would have found a spark somewhere. Either way, it didn’t take long for the tone of the game to be established.

Within the first minute, St. Barry’s captain Trevor Murtagh left Kevin Feeney a little the worse for wear, while Tommy Cox and Eoghan Diffley contested a ball at midfield, and after play moved on, the two men felt the need to continue to exchange views and thoughts with each other for a few moments.

And so it continued. There was no single violent act in the game worthy of excessive condemnation. Yet it was always unclear if players were more interested in getting a clean possession of the ball, or getting a window of opportunity to put in a hit that would ever so fractionally err on the side of high, or late, or excessively forceful.

When the focus was on playing football, both sides showed that they could do that too. Kilglass Gaels were excellent in the early stages, and two fine points from Shane McCormack helped them into a 0-4 to 0-0 lead after six minutes.

Kilglass Gaels were exerting huge pressure on Tony Fallon’s kickout at this stage, and with a slight breeze blowing into the face of the St. Barry’s goalkeeper, he struggled to connect with green-shirted colleagues for the most part.

On the rare occasions when St. Barry’s did break out of their own half, however, they looked sharp. David Keenan showed all the leadership and maturity one would expect from a former county man when he got his club off the mark in the eighth minute, and, over time, he and Diffley began to take control of midfield and give St. Barry’s a little bit of traction. Gradually, they built on that to take an 0-5 to 0-4 lead into the dressing room at half time.

Yet even when a little bit of football would break out, a flashpoint would soon arise to dampen momentum. St. Barry’s were their own worst enemy at times with a string of slow, floated handpasses and kick passes into tightly marked forwards, inviting defenders to hammer through from behind. But the theme of “not taking a backward step” didn’t benefit either side, as there were several instances where discretion was the better part of valour, but it still wasn’t exercised.

Typical of this was a needless pull on Cillian Campbell’s jersey just before half time, allowing Kyle Cawley to level the game when Campbell had been surrounded by three defenders.

However far more obvious was the same misplaced instinct for the game’s crucial score — Gavin Tully’s goal after 14 minutes of the second half. By now the sides were level so Kilglass had steadied the ship after 25 minutes, but St. Barry’s still had the breeze, and plenty of cause for optimism.

A breaking ball in the Kilglass full-backline necessitated real bravery on the part of Damien Gearty, and he did what was needed, diving to flick the ball away to a colleague, even though he could see that he was going to take a hit from Cawley.

Kilglass duly moved the ball up the pitch and it fell to Gavin Foynes to either tap over a simple point, or float a ball across towards Gavin Tully. Again, St. Barry’s erred on the side of abrasiveness in their attempts to stop the move, and so Tully was able to get a good clean fist on the ball, and at the price of another hard hit, he directed it into the net from 12 metres out.

Two outstanding scores from Fiachra Leavy and Eoghan Diffley gave St. Barry’s a lifeline, but once more with feeling, Ciarán McHugh made a run down the sideline and a St. Barry’s defender was left with the choice of run with him, force him back and avert the danger, or attempt to knock him out over the sideline with a showtime hit.

That choice was obvious in this game, and McHugh took the knock, kept running, and kicked a Hollywood point from the sideline.

Then, just as they did in the first six minutes, Kilglass took over for the last six. Daniel Cox and Barry Conroy kicked points from distance and substitute Darragh Conroy came off the bench to rattle in a second goal.

Game, set and match to Kilglass as the red mist finally began to evaporate.