Club News

04/05/03 Hurlers record worst performance of the season

St. John's hurlers lost their way against St. Paul's in terrible fashion last night, the best thing to come out of it being the fact that the team can not play as bad for the rest of the season.

St. Paul's adopted their traditional approach to the game, pulling the corner forward out into midfield, opening up the full forward line and sending in high ball after high ball. Whereas in previous years the St. John's defence held solid and midfield kept the ball moving up the field this was not the case on this occasion. The 3rd St. Paul's midfielder got a lot of the breaking ball and sent it constantly into the St. John's defence.

The St. Paul's full forward in particular tortured the defence, catching a lot of ball and finishing with a number of goals. At one stage in the first half Mickey O'Neill hand-passed the sliotar out to Conor Gannon on the right wing and what should have then been a simple clearance turned into disaster when the ball was fumbled and the St. Paul's marker gathered it up and sent it over the bar - this, unfortunately, pretty much summed up his match. Whilst defensively St. John's have been strong and solid over the last couple of matches they were in disarray last night and no-one could find the cure for it over the 70 minutes of play.

Midfield was dominated by St. Paul's throughout the game and in the forward line scores did not come easily - a number of goal chances in particular went abegging in the second half. Paul Montgomery did register a couple of goals in the first half and Locky McCurdy produced a characteristically well fought for point but, these were to be the only sparks in an otherwise poor team performance. St. Paul's continued to get scores on the board and ended up winning by a huge 12 point margin.

Despite this set-back it is certainly not a result which will send the hurlers into the doldrums, they're made of sterner stuff than to let that happen however, a huge improvement will be expected for the match against Cushendun next Monday night. There is a good spirit and determination about the hurling team this year, although it deserted them temporarily last night, and it will be this attitude which will see the boys bounce back with a good performance within the next few weeks.

 

		St. John's
		C. Cunningham
J. J. Hartigan		M. O'Neill	N. McCallin
C. Gannon		K. Rafferty	C. Clarke
		G. Cunningham H. Kennedy
G. McFall		L. McCurdy	S. Thompson
J. Mead		R. Heenan	P. Montgomery
(Subs: C. Cunningham for J.J. Hartigan, E. Blaney for N. McCallin, N. Kelly for P. Montgomery, A. Brennan for H. Kennedy D. O'Hara for J. Mead)