Offaly manager pleased to see his players pick up silverware

MANAGER David Sullivan was pleased for his players to get some silverware and fuel the rebuild of camogie in Offaly, after they overcame a spirited Derry by 4-13 to 0-10 in the Very Camogie League Division 2A final in Thurles on Sunday.

It seems like more or less everything is on the up and up in the land of the Faithful, with even the county’s folk hero, Shane Lowry flying the flag on a patch of green grass in Augusta.

At FBD Semple Stadium, it was all about the camogs, however, and following the improvement in fortunes of the hurlers and footballers, they relished doing their bit for the green, white and gold.

And this was a targeted step up the ladder.

“There’s a lot of work gone into this since last November,” said Sullivan. “We’ve really gone after this competition. We really wanted it. There’s no point in saying anything different and it’s great the work has come to fruition today.

“Sometimes you have to go down to get back up. They had a chance to go down and probably stayed senior a year too long in my opinion and got some bad beatings which didn’t do them any good but this group have been great.

“This is a very young team, with lots of players under the age of 20 and they will take a lot from this. And then we have a few experienced players to help guide them.”

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The Teehan cousins, Mairéad and Grace, are among that select latter cohort, and they scored 2-4 apiece. Mairéad’s contribution was all from play, with the brace of goals coming in the first half after Laura Coyle had denied her and Faye Mulrooney.

Then, after Derry hit five points on the trot early in the second half from Rachel McAllister, Aimee Lennon, Lauren McKenna and Orlaith Hull (two frees), it was Grace that stopped any potential fightback in its tracks with a 43^rd minute goal and she followed up with another, 11 minutes later to make the victory certain.

“Mairéad and Grace are very good in that regard and they got the big scores today.

“In truth, we should have been much further ahead at half-time as we wasted a lot of chances but hopefully that will come with experience. It got a bit panicky ten minutes into the second half, Derry got a bit of momentum but once we got the third goal, that was the end of the game.

“We will look to the Leinster Championship now and then the All-Ireland, but it’s nice to be going into them with a League medal, and to be promoted to 1B for next year. It’s brilliant and fantastic for Offaly in general.”

Derry boss, Eamon Melaugh felt it was part of a learning curve for his own young squad of players, with nerves a factor in how they started the game.

“The goals killed us in the first half,” said Melaugh. “Offaly got the goals at the right time in the second half. We were coming back at them but they got the killer goal. We had them back to five points, everything was going well but that killer goal was a real sucker punch.

“The first half, we more or less handed them goals and at this level, you can’t give away goals like that.

“But they showed a lot of character at the start of the second half, came back at them but it unfortunately didn’t go our way and we’ll be back next year hopefully.”