Bride Rovers Minor Footballers win a fantastic semi-final against Carrigtwohill to qualify for final.

Because we won our Football Championship group we qualified for a Semi Final against Carrigtowhill.

Last Wed 3rd was a fine dry September evening in Pairc Na Bride. We line up against opponents that had narrowly beat us in the Football League Final early this year.

We had a big panel togged out on the night, but had a player or two out with injury. We reminded the lads what happened in our previous meeting with Carrigtowhill and they had to put everything into the game and secure a place in the Championship Final.

Our opponents won the toss, they played with the wind and got the better start with 2 points from play and 1 from a free. They turned over or out-ball and scored a goal after a penalty was awarded.

Fair play to our lads as they didn’t panic and started winning our kick-outs from David. We ran and passed great ball up into the forwards and got on the score board. We were turning over their kick outs with great fielding from Conor & Cormac with Sean & Rudi running off the shoulders and adding to the scores.
Fast aggressive hard tackling was produced by both sides, but we got a run of scores from Conor and Rudi, and a goal each from Cormac & Finn. Our opponents were also scoring well from play & frees despite our tough tight defense of Jamie, Denis and Ronan in the full back line. A feature of the half were some great carries out of defense through Cathal, Adam and Gearoid. The score at the short whistle - Bride Rovers 2-3 Carrigtowhill 1-7.

The second half started with the same intensity and they got the first point. The lads were great on the kick outs and secured great possession through Oliver. Sean and Michael finished some great team-play with points. We had made two changes at half time. We brought in Jack Mannix at corner forward and Mark Hynes at corner back. We got better ball into our forward because we pressed their kick-outs and converted more points through Jack and Oliver.

All over the field we were working very hard and playing as a great team. It takes an entire panel to win a championship match and we finished as strong as we started. We brought in Matty for Rudi, and Gary in for Michael. Both gave it their all, and it was clear our opponents were tiring. Our backs pressed up and turned great ball over to our favo. We had to recycle the ball against a tight defense but got another run of points from Michael, Conor, Jack, Rudi and our last score was a well finish ball to the back of the net by Cormac. This score came from our boys attacking with hard running.

With time up we had a 3 point lead but our opponents were given a good few extra minutes of play and scored a great 2 pointer to leave just one point in it. Credit to our young men from Bride Rovers, they defended bravely and saw the game out in a final score of 3-10 to 1-15.

We now have a Minor Football Championship Final to look forward to in a few weeks against Cobh.