Niall Lynch was captain of Hunterstown Rovers in 2002. Sadly, unlike the previous year, he failed to make his acquaintance with any silverware. Kevin Carney reports Hunterstown Rovers defender Niall Lynch knew at the start of 2002 it was always going to be extremely difficult to match the excitement he experienced on and off the pitch the previous year. The buzz of 2001 was going to be nigh impossible to match, he reckoned. In truth, things for him personally could only go one way. 2001 simply couldn't be matched. Too true. "The week I got married in 2001 I lifted the Division 2A league cup. The night we clinched the Division 2A league was the same night of my stag night and we got presented with the cup on the Wednesday, two days before I got married. Last year was one I'm not likely to forget," Niall enlightens us. Last Autumn, a party of 57 adults travelled en bloc under the banner of Hunterstown Rovers for a holiday to Playa des Ingles. It's obviously all go around Hunterstown and is 27-year old Niall complaining! Cup or no cup, there always seems to be a good spirit about the Rovers. They appear to enjoy their football, enjoy one another's company and don't need the embellishment of silverware to keep the train steaming along the track. Santa Ponsa one year, Playa des Ingles the next. As good as a day out on county final day, local gaels moot - well not exactly! "We're as ambitious as the next club but, win, lose or draw, we like to keep the show on the road. The club is in a healthy state, enjoys a good support within the locality and is anxious to do well both on and off the field. There's great work, for instance, being done at underage level down the years and, on the other side of the coin, we're hoping sometime in the near-future to expand our dressing-rooms and possibly install a training pitch. "We've a lot of youngsters in the area eager to play football, the local population is growing and we have to make sure that we gear ourselves up to be able to cater for the demand that will emerge." And as the outgoing treasurer of the club, Niall knows only too well that planning and budgeting is an essential part in the business of running any club. In this respect, he has spent the last couple of years complementing his role as player and captain. Work for him off the field wearing his Hunterstown hat has included helping to run the club's annual racenight and the weekly lotto - "there's always a victim to be got" - among other things. While he may have delighted in lifting a cup in 2001, Niall quickly discovered that no speech preparation work would be needed a year on."Our championship season was nothing short of a disaster. We didn't put in half the effort that we should have. Our manager Jim Mathews deserved to get more from us for all the work he put in," admits Niall. That said, Rovers did consolidate their hard-earned senior status while managing to ruffle a few feathers before making their exit from the championship arena. For most of their first round, group D clash with last year's champions Newtown Blues, the red and whites put it up to the hot favourites. Even without the experience of long-serving trio, Dessie Levins, Denis Reilly and John McBride, Rovers gave their opponents quite a scare. Indeed, the defending champions had to survive a tigerish and stylish display by Hunterstown before eventually carving out a 0-16 to 0-11 victory. Hunterstown played some wonderful football at the Dunleer venue to storm into a 0-6 to 0-2 lead after 20 minutes with some lovely point scoring by Paul McDonnell, Michael McBride, David Fedigan and Paddy Mathews but, sadly, despite 0-5 personal tally from John Levins, Rovers failed to hang onto their lead. The Drogheda brigade upper their performance a couple of gears on the restart to convert their 0-4 to 0-6 half-time deficit into an eventual five point winning margin. "Even though our expectations weren't that high for the championship and most of our focus was on the league, we were still disappointed with the way things went for us in the latter end against the Blues. "Not many people would have given us much hope in taking on the Blues but we were looking good at half time. It was hard to take in that we were leading because before the game we would have been happy enough being a couple of points down at the break. "We played some great football early on but then things slowly began to come apart for us in the second half. Part of our trouble was that we changed our style of play in the second half and that worked against us. " In the first half, we played the ball on, played a lot more direct football but for some reason in the second half, we tended to hold onto the ball too long. We really shot ourselves in the foot. In fairness though, they (Newtown Blues) were worthy winners and their five point winning margin was just about right on the day. "But I'd liked to have played them with all our players available. Although we've a good mix of youth and experience, missing three very experienced fellas at the same time was a big blow. I think we would have held onto our lead had we got those fellas," Niall, son of outgoing club chairman Patsy Lynch, reflects. Having recently climbed from intermediate to senior, Niall is aware that it will take time before the club can realistically hope to be challenging for senior honours. Retaining their senior status and blooding some of the team's younger members was the twin objective in 2002, Niall suggests. The club's intermediate league success of 2001 will tide them over for a wee bit to come. Though the Hunterstown squad is still maturing and learning the trade at senior level, Niall reckons that Rovers could, and should, have beaten Roche Emmets in their second round tie which was played in mid-June. Even though the winners-elect controlled most of the first half exchanges and led by 0-4 to 0-1 after 20 minutes, points from Robert Martin, John Levins (two) and Michael McBride left the underdogs trailing by just 0-5 to 0-6 at the interval. Unfortunately things were later to go pear-shaped for Rovers and they eventually suffered a 0-11 to 1-12 defeat - the killer blow coming at the three-quarter hour mark when Roche's Gerry Murphy hammered home a neat goal. "It was a bad pass by me which led to their goal," Niall admits, "and unfortunately it always looked as if the team that managed to get a goal would go on and win it and that's the way it turned out. Overall though we didn't do ourselves justice against Roche Emmets and that was probably our most disappointing performance of the three championship games we played," adds the full back and member of the intermediate championship title-winning 1999 team. In a way, justice was served in round three when the Pairc Baile Fiach-based outfit gained their first points of the championship by beating St. Pats at the Dowdallshill venue by 1-13 to 1-9. Rovers' win was all the more commendable as they had to rebound stoutly after going behind by 0-0 to 1-5 after just twelve minutes of play. However a five point tally by John Levins subsequently helped Rovers secure a sizeable footing in the game from which they were able to ultimately engineer a well-deserved four point victory. "It was good to win a match, and a very competitive game but it was really a meaningless fixture, no good to either of us in terms of keeping us in the championship." And so next year can't come quickly enough then? "We'd like to do better than we did this year. We should have done better considering the leads we built up at stages of the games against the Blues and Roche Emmets. We showed a lot of character in coming back and winning the Division 2A league in 2001 after being relegated at the end of 2000. We have more or less the same panel in place so I think we have it in us to maybe get up into a top two place in the league and get a decent run in the championship." Tweet

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