Loughmore’s poise trumps Toomevara’s challenge

By Shane Brophy

Many of the Toomevara players from their hay-day between 1992 & 2008 when they harvested eleven county senior hurling titles, in looking on at last Sunday’s final would have seen a lot of the same traits in Loughmore/Castleiney.

The greyhounds brought the level of workrate and ability to the contest but as every other club has found out this year, Loughmore/Castleiney just have the answers everything that is thrown at them.

The final five-point margin was harsh on Toomevara in a game where the lead never stretched beyond one score until the dramatic last five minutes which yielded three goals.

Despite the closeness of the contest, there was never any sense that Loughmore/Castleiney would end up on the losing side.

The only way it seemed they would is if Toomevara hit them for a late goal with little or no time left to respond, as the Mid side can testify themselves from the 2020 final loss to Kiladangan.

When Conor O’Meara showed the dexterity to find room and somehow the power to fire one-handed a shot past a surprised Aidan McGrath in the Loughmore goal to cut the margin to two points on 59 minutes, it was set up for a Toomevara smash and grab.

For all the excellence of this Loughmore/Castleiney team, the one aspect that is most impressive is their composure. They just don’t panic, at any stage, and they responded to the concession of the goal in the perfect way, by getting one of their own.

It was a little fortunate and certainly Toomevara could be critical of referee Alan Tierney for allowing for the puckout to be taken after the O’Meara goal when Jack Delaney was down receiving treatment in his own half-back line, in the area which the puckout landed.

Whether he would have been in a position to influence the play can be debated but Toome did have four defenders back against four Loughmore forwards, with John McGrath winning the ball from Andrew Ryan, before breaking a tackle from Jake Hackett and firing under Rory Brislane for the decisive score of the game.

Toomevara would have needed two goals to recover in the just over three minutes that remained, which even for a club of their tradition was too great a challenge, despite getting the performance they wanted on the day, but not the result.

Toomevara don’t do moral victories as they have 21 senior titles to their credit, but in the context of this team, they are going in the right direction and the experience and hurt of this defeat should spur them on going forward.

To beat a team like Loughmore/Castleiney, they would have needed a lot to go right, chief among that was getting big performances in attack, particularly Darragh McCarthy who had one of his least impactful games of the campaign.

That was down to the respect Loughmore paid him, firstly being man-marked by Lorcan Egan, while Brian McGrath also sat deep in the area in front of him and Adam Hall to great effect and likely had the most touches of the ball of any player in the game.

It didn’t help either that the middle third of the field was so fiercely competed for that Toomevara, and indeed Loughmore, didn’t get as much quality service into their inside forward lines.

With McCarthy in check, Toome needed others to fill the scoring void, but Mark McCarthy was kept scoreless while Jack Delaney and Kevin McCarthy had a strong starts with two points each but were unable to add to it.

Six different scorers wasn’t going to be enough with just 1-9 coming from play, although the same as Loughmore, who got off nine more shots in the game.

Toomevara did get impact off the bench in Conor O’Meara, their only survivor from their last success in 2008, scoring 1-2 from play in his nineteen minutes on the field.

In a game of fine margins, the impact from the bench proved to be important and while Toome got 1-2, Loughmore got 1-3 from their four subs. Ciaran’s, McCormack & McGrath, did what they usually do when introduced from the bench by scoring three points between them, but it was two of their less heralded replacements that provided the greatest impact with Eoin O’Connell, with his first touch after coming on as sub, taking a pass from John McGrath, and took the ball on before passing to Paul McCahey who fired to the net.

That composure, even among the more inexperienced players, further indicates the team ethic of this Loughmore/Castleiney team who tend to make more of the right decisions in games and when you do that, you tend to win a greater share and in this context helped them to a fifth county senior hurling championship, in what was an unbeaten campaign with nine wins from nine in divisional and county championship, as deserved a title has there has been.