Curraha 3-10 Ballinlough 0-13

Curraha's second string made their second final of the year after qualifying for the Junior D Championship final after a hard fought victory over Ballinlough. This will be Curraha's first Championship final since tasting Junior A success 14 years ago. Ballinlough opened the scoring after two minutes with a point but Sean Keogh got Curraha on the board shortly after with a sweetly taken score. David Coyle added another to cancel out a free from Ballinlough to leave the sides level after 7 minutes. In a tight midfield battle Curraha were getting the better of their counterparts and were winning a lot of dirty ball and when David Dunne got into space he slotted over his sides third point to draw level again. Curraha seemed to get the upper hand after this score and Coyle was proving a handful for the Lough full back line and he got in behind the defence to raise the green flag halfway through the first half. Dunne added two further points to increase the lead to five with ten minutes remaining. But Ballinlough weren't going to give up that easy and they responded with a point which was cancelled out by another point from Dunne. However they got the last four scores off the half and some good keeping from Luke McCarthy saw him fisting two balls over there under pressure from the Loughs inside line. Curraha went in at half time leading 1-06 to 0-7.

Curraha came out all guns blazing in the second half and had 1-03 on the score board after four minutes. This blitz started with a point from substitute Aaron McDonnell while Coyle added his side's second goal of the game after burying the ball to the back of the net. He also added a point from the resulting kick-out. After this blitz Curraha seemed to take their foot off the pedal and Ballinlough got on top in the midfield battle and were getting more possession and this showed on the score board as they added four unanswered points to bring the deficit back to three. Coyle decided to come out the field to gain possession and when he out jumped everyone from McCarthy's kick out, he found space to run into and slot a well needed score for the ha men. Ballinlough responded again to their credit and made it a two point game with five minutes remaining and although they had chances Curraha dug out the victory which was sealed on the stroke of injury time when Sean Laffey was found unmarked inside the lough defence and he blasted the ball to the net. The resulting kick out saw hard working Brain Cosgrave get a well-deserved point.

It was a great team effort from Curraha with Cosgrave, Dunne and Coyle performing well.

Curraha: L. McCarthy, PJ McMahon, C. McCann, K. Laffey, B. Doyle, G. Dowling, M. Phelan, A. Coyle, S. Keogh 0-1, S. Laffey 1-0, D. Dunne 0-4, D. Doran, B. Cosgrave 0-1, R. Mooney, D. Coyle 2-3. Subs: A. McDonnell 0-1 for Doran, N. O'Dowd for Doyle, D. Hanley for Mooney, A. O'Connor for McDonnell

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