Michael Lyng Motors Senior Camogie 3rd Round
Piltown 0-11 Tullaroan 1-06
By Jason O’Brien
Piltown maintained their unbeaten run in this year’s League/Championship with a hard-fought victory over Tullaroan on a windy Sunday morning.
The wind was catching out the home side from the start as the first shot of the day drifted to the right and wide, that was a trend for a lot of the half, as the wind blowing towards the Road End goal was pushing shots to the right and wide.
Tullaroan scored first, with Ciara Dunne popping up to put the ball over the bar in the seventh minute, before Aine Doyle opened Piltown’s scoring in the 11th, this was followed by the same score from Katie Power soon after
Tullaroan were battling hard as Piltown came at them, but Piltown were missing scores and even though the away side hadn’t many opportunities they weren’t far behind as the wind played havoc with any high ball aimed between the posts. Tullaroan had Grace Walsh sweeping and she was doing a good job at it and had Shannon Doheny and Beth Grace willing to take the ball forward. Piltown had a good latter fifteen minutes of the first half as Heather Phelan and Kellyann Doyle scored their frees to stretch the lead to 6 points, Niamh Dowling scored Tullaroan’s second point of the half from a free to leave the score at half time – PILTOWN 0-08 TULLAROAN 0-02
The scoreline really doesn’t do the half justice, as there was serious hurling done by both side and it was going to be interesting how the away side would handle that wind in the second half
Vivienne Holmes got the second half underway and it looked like Tullaroan had maybe taken note of the problems the Piltown side had with the breeze in the first half as Niamh Dowling put over three points from frees in the first 10 minutes to close the gap back to three points. It was tough going now as Tullaroan attacked and had the Piltown defence under pressure, Lorna OShea and Aoife Landers were excellent and they needed to be as the away side put ball in on top of them. It worked to great effect in the 41st minute as a ball into the inside forwards was contested by two Piltown backs and one Tullaroan forward, the ball broke to the other forward and Eadoin Murphy made no mistake as she hit it high across the goal into the top right-hand side of Aoife Norris’s net. The game was now level and Tullaroan were buoyed by their comeback, with Shannon Doheny playing very well driving her side forward. They then took the lead as Niamh Dowling pointed her fifth free of the game in the 43rd minute.
The game got scrappy, with a few injuries and players down and this contributed to a low scoring last 15 minutes, but as was said already, the scoring didn’t tell the full story as the two sides battled for the win. And when you are in a battle, you need players to step up to the plate and there’s few better than Kellyann Doyle to do that. She won dirty ball, won tackles and then showed her nerve as she pointed two frees into the wind from beyond the 45 on the left wing to firstly level, and then to take the lead. Sixty minutes gone, and still only a point lead and then Kellyann found her sister Aine and Aine made no mistake from out on the opposite wing to leave the scores at the final whistle
PILTOWN 0-11 Tullaroan 1-06
