Lena Downs Football Tournament - Ballingeary Retain Trophy

Lena Downs Football Tournament - Ballingeary Retain Trophy

June 09, 2015

The Lena Down Junior Football Tournament took place in glorious summer conditions on Saturday 6th June. 6 teams entered this event with the defending champions Ballingeary favourites to retain their title. Number of games played per team varied from 3 games to 5 games.

Group One contained Ballingeary, Bishopstown and Ballyphehane. Ballingeary went straight to semi- final as group winners.
Group Two contained Ballincollig, Gleann na Laoi and Nemo Rangers with GNL emerging as group winners.

Ballincollig began with a hard fought 1-7 to 2-2 win over Nemo. For our second game we rotated our players and enjoyed a keenly contested match before Gleann na Laoi won 1-4 to 0-4.

Ballincollig’s next match was a quarter final knock out v Bishopstown. Collig found their stride in this game to lead 1-5 to nil at half time before a strong second half saw us win 2-11 to 2-0.
In the semi -final we played against the wind in the first half against Gleann na Laoi and Collig found scores hard to come by. At half time we were behind 0-1 to 0-5. The second half saw a big improvement and high work rate which lead to a win by 1-5 to 0-5.

The semi-final effort and warm day seemed to suck the energy from tired legs as we faced into a final against Ballingeary. However our players made a big effort and started the final brightly. Unfortunately goal chances were missed and Ballingeary gradually took over to eventually comfortably retain their title with some excellent scores.

Managers on the day John Connaughton and Kevin Bohane could not fault the effort of all on our 21 man panel and saw this day as a good build up to Jnr B football championship on Wed 24th June.
Praise must go to Organiser James O Reilly and tournament co-ordinators Eamonn Twohig and Con Burke for all the hard work that went into making the tournament such a success.

Panel with cumulative scores: John Stevenson, David Murray, Tim Collins 0-1, James Murphy 0-1, JP O Leary, Padraig Harrington 0-3, Richard O Regan 0-3, Con Breen 1-2, Ian Roche 0-4, Dan Barry 0-2, Eoghan O Neill, Ronan Cambridge 0-3, Gavin O Callaghan 4-7, Brian Glavin 0-3, Noel Cronin, Kevin Bohane, Eamonn Murphy, Padraig O Donovan, Gerard O Leary, Fergal Considine 0-1, Michael McNulty