Clare Minor A Ladies Football Final

Clare Minor A Ladies Football Final St. Joseph’s Miltown 5-8 Cooraclare 1-2

St. Joseph’s Miltown justified their favourites tag
when they retained their Minor A championship at the excellently
appointed Coolmeen GAA grounds on Sunday last. Cooraclare played
with the aid of a strong breeze in the 1st half and started brightly
with their midfield pair of Aine Pine and Sally Glynn winning plenty
of possession and centre back Afric O’Neill dominating at the back.
Cooraclare opened the scoring with an Aine Pine free on 5mins but
they failed to build on this score while on top due mainly to some
excellent defensive play by a Miltown back unit that totally dominated
the Cooraclare forwards during the course of the game.

Miltown began to break even at midfield and on one of their first
attacks Fiona Lafferty struck for the first of her four goals after
a scramble in the Cooraclare goal mouth. Aisling McCaw and Aine
Pine then traded frees before another Pine free was misjudged by
the miltown defence and sailed into the net to give Cooraclare the
lead approaching half time. Cooraclare knew that they needed a bigger
lead going into the second half and pushed on for the remainder
of the half but their case wasn’t helped when Afric O’Neill was
sin binned for a foul on Fiona Lafferty. With this numerical advantage
Miltown saw out the remainder of the half and would have been happy
to be only a point down at the interval knowing that they would
have the aid of the wind in the second half.

The second half started slowly and Miltown had to change their team
around when they suffered three injuries in quick succession to
Catherine Shannon, Aisling McCaw and Sharon Rynne who all had to
be replaced by Siobhan Talty, Katie Curtin and Sinead Sexton. With
her first touch Sinead Sexton drew the sides level. Miltown now
began to take over at midfield and with Suzanne Murphy at centre
forward and Niamh Coyne at Full Forward dominating their positions
Cooraclare were being put under intense pressure. The game was finished
as a contest when in the space of 10 minutes Fiona Lafferty struck
three goals and three points, during this period Miltown also had
points from Suzanne Murphy, Edel Hynes and Niamh Reddan.

Credit to Cooraclare they kept trying to attack through Patricia
Callinan, Aine Pine and Rachel Garry they just couldn’t break down
the Miltown defence.

The score of the game came just before the end when a lovely passing
move by miltown put Suzanne Murphy through on goal and she released
an unstoppable shot to the Cooraclare net. All that was left to
do was for County Board Chairman James Lafferty to present the Minor
Cup to Miltown captain Niamh Reddan.

Best for the winners were all the defensive unit, Sandra Malone,
Tara Glynn Suzanne Murphy and Fiona lafferty. Cooraclare had impressive
performances from Aine Pine, Sally Glynn, Louise Murrihy, Orla Reidy
and Afric O’Neill.

Scorers: Miltown- Fiona Lafferty 4-3, Suzanne Murphy 1-1, Aisling
McCaw, Niamh Reddan, Edel Hynes and Sinead Sexton 0-1 each

Cooraclare- Aine Pine 1-2