UCC capture Junior Football Cup

With the winter closing in UCC and County Council played the last Cork Interfirm football game of the year when they met in the final of the Junior Football Cup under the lights in Ballincollig on Monday night.

This was the strongest team that UCC had assembled for the year and with the Council struggling to reach a quorum of 15 players it was clear that UCC would have the advantage.  However, this belief seemed to feed through t0 the UCC team once the game started and they started in a very lethargic manner.

UCC had a lot of possession but running down blind alleys, a series of  misplaced passes and ill-chosen shots saw very few scores registered.  As the half progressed all of UCC’s players got more involved in the play.

Centre forward Dave Stafford was dominating the aerial exchanges and won a series of County Council kick outs in a row with some fine fetches.  UCC finally began to make their dominance tell on the scoresheet and kicked over some good points.  The Council changed their kick-out strategy and avoided the midfield battleground that was being won by UCC.  They targeted low, short kick outs to the wings that paid immediate dividends.

The Council got a few points to keep them in the game but a period of sustained pressure as the first half drew to a close saw them create a number of clear-cut goal chances.  One of these was kicked wide but they were extremely unlucky when a second chance was blazed against the cross-bar with goalkeeper Diarmaid Hallissey beaten.  UCC were fortunate to be 0-09 to 0-04 ahead at the break.

The County Council pushed more players forward in the second half in an immediate bid to narrow the gap.  However, this backfired at the UCC forwards were able to exploit the extra space they were now offered.  Instead of getting the goal that would get them back into the game, County Council conceded one with unmarked wing-forward Paddy O’Gorman fisting an excellent 40 yard pass from man-of-the-match Ronan Power to the net.

UCC added a second goal a few minutes later from Conor O’Regan which killed the game off as a contest.  County Council did not simply throw in the towel and they did press for the goal which would have narrowed the gap.  However, they found Diarmaid Hallissey in a determined mood and a couple of fine stops, and one excellent one in particular, rebuffed their efforts.

UCC substitute James Moylan was nicely teed up for UCC’s third goal which finished their scoring.  County Council were determined to raise a green flag and a fine move saw their full-forward put through in a one-on-one situation and he made no mistake with a tidy finish to the bottom left hand corner.

By the final whistle UCC had ran out deserving 3-13 to 1-07 winners and Dave Stafford collected UCC’s first silverware of what has been a long year of interfirm GAA.