Saint Mary’s contest Western Final this Sunday

Sunday is a big day for the Sliabh gCua/Saint Mary’s G.A.A. Club as they take on Tourin in the Western Junior Hurling Final at Fraher Field, the game having a 3pm throw in.

Both sides qualified for Sunday’s final after narrow wins over Abbeyside and Collagen in the semi-finals recently at the same venue.

Tourin were the first side to qualify for the final when they staged a late fight back to beat a fancied Collagen side 5-8 to 1-18.

On the night Tourin were first out of the traps as Jack Leahy hit 1-1 for them inside five minutes of the game starting. The side that played intermediate last year hit further goals through Tom O’Brien and Darragh Wilkinson in the first half but it was not enough to send them to the dressing rooms trailing 3-3 to 1-10 at the break.

Tourin failed to score in an 18-minute spell between the 40^th and 58^th minutes at which point they trailed 1-17 to 3-6 but in the two minutes of normal time that remained plus just over four added minutes they did enough to win the game as David O’Brien and Daniel Dransfield hit late goals to win the game.

Saint Mary’s in the second semi-final were always on top. Eoin Kearns put in a man of the match performance hitting 1-10 and also saved a late penalty to secure his sides passage to this Sunday’s final.

On the night Saint Mary’s had good performances from Kevin Sheehan, Jason Sheehan, Owen Barron, Denis Coffey and Sean Fitzpatrick and will feel that if they can repeat that sort of performance they can retain the title they won twelve months ago.

Going on their performances to Saint Mary’s will go into this weekend’s game with the favourites tag around their necks.

The side coached by Maurice Geary look to be well balanced, with a nice blend of youth and experience.

The neutrals will all agree that Saint Mary’s should be favourites, but Tourin will be doing their best to get back up to the intermediate ranks at the first time of asking.

Inter county players Shane and Darragh Fives are part of their set up and are quality players. Darragh played no part in their semi-final win because of injury and Shane left the field with an injury after just 18 minutes. At this point it remains to be seen what part they will play this weekend.

Another member of the Fives clan is Niall who is also a fine hurler and is likely to start for the side in red and white stripes in the middle of the field.

They also have quality players in Brendan Scanlon and Jack Leahy again members of families which have long links to the Tourin club while another family that with Tourin connections are the Wilkinson’s and who will be well represented on the day.

These two clubs contested the Western Final nearly four decades ago (1977).

On that day it was Tourin that won a close fought game 4-8 to 3-10.

Expect this weekend’s game to be as close, but let’s hope the final result will be in Saint Mary’s favour.