County Intermediate Ladies Football Final Replay – Saturday, 13th October 2018
St. Brendan’s 2-10 Tuam/Cortoon 2-7
Darren Kelly in Mountbellew
Between the weather and a determined Tuam/Cortoon outfit, St. Brendan’s had to earn their victory as they were crowned County Intermediate Ladies Football champions.
Michelle Delaney and Leanne Walsh got the goals for Michael McHale’s team but it was the hard work, in contrasting conditions, over the two days that swung this towards the Ballygar/Newbridge team.
Captain Nora Ward, in the Moycullen sun or the Mountbellew rain, led by example over two hours and earned the player of the match accolade for the replay.
“It’s always a hard game playing Tuam,” said Ward afterwards. “This is our third time this year now to play them. We won the first day and obviously last week was very tight. We just couldn’t get the scores on the board. But thankfully today, it went better for us.
“You can never say it’s over until the final whistle. Luckily, Leanne (Walsh) popped up there at the end with that goal and gave us the gap to hold on, drop back and defend.
“Last week, I don’t even know what we can say about it. Just nothing went right for us. It started off with a wide and just continued from there.
“So, obviously this week, that was our main priority to work on. Settle up in front of the posts and just take our scores if we can and not panic. And thankfully, it worked out today.
“One of our mottos is never give up, never let up. We just have to hold on throughout. We knew what we have in the panel. That’s just not on the team but in the panel. And the girls that came in helped us so we knew we could hold out and just not panic. And thankfully, that’s what we did.
“I think there was just a belief in us today. We knew the last two times we played them, we didn’t play up to our potential. And today we knew we had to beat them first of all and thankfully we did.
“We didn’t panic and when we got going, we believed in our self and just went the whole way up the pitch. And Leanne is a cracker player. So, she finished off well.
“The weather is the same for the two teams. We actually said it on the way up; the conditions were completely different today. Maybe it worked in our favour because last week we couldn’t score. So, maybe we’re better in these conditions. I don’t know but we’ll take it anyway.
“To be honest, we haven’t spoke once about it (Connacht championship) because we knew after last week, it was going to be a massive battle today.”
St. Brendan’s face Sligo’s St. Nathy’s in the 2018 Connacht Intermediate Ladies Football Semi-Final on Sunday, 21st October. Throw-in at Clonberne is 12pm.
