St Eunan’s make light work of understrength Carndonagh in Senior Hurling Championship

An understrength Carndonagh team put up a valiant fight against St Eunan’s at O'Dochairtaigh Park in Foden on Friday evening but were ultimately well beaten by the Letterkenny men.   

Carn took an early lead from two Luke White frees and Eunan’s had points from Cormac Finn and Cathal O'Brien before a penalty on ten minutes for Eunan’s seemed to change the momentum of the game.

White did save Cathal O'Neill's penalty but the resulting 65 was scored and it spurred Eunan’s on to take some long-range scores, with O'Neill in particular deadly from long range. White kept the Carn scoreboard ticking over and the score was 0-10 to 0-4 after 20 minutes.

The Carn boys were hanging on at this stage and a late burst from Eunan’s with points from Peter Kelly, Brian MacIntyre and John Kealy were added to with a wonderful goal by Kealy flicking a crossfield ball to the net to leave the score 1-14 to 0-6 at half-time.

The second-half was a procession as Carn's low numbers meant that there were few subs to offer, while Eunan’ss rolled their bench and continued to score at will.

County men Daire Ó Maoileidigh and Sean McVeigh were both very accurate and knocked over a number of fine scores.

White did keep Carn ticking along and scored one free from well inside his own half, but it was a battle that was long lost at that stage.

McVeigh rifled an unstoppable shot to the back of the net with 15 minutes left and the final TWO scores where from Gaffney and Ahern off the bench.

Carndonagh scorers: Luke White 0-9,7f.

St Eunan’s scorers: Cathal O’Brien 0-9,6f; Sean McVeigh 1-2; John Kealy 1-2; Daire Ó Maoileidigh 0-5; Peter Kelly 0-2; Brendan Gaffey 0-1; Matt Ahern 0-1; Ryan Hilferty 0-1; Brian MacIntyre 0-1; Cormac Finn 0-1.    

Carndonagh: Stephen Burns; Liam Fox, Ryan Davenport, Oran Lafferty;  Shaun McCreanor, Luke White, Paul Kelly; Michael McCarron, Conor Fagan; Paddy Monagle, Darragh McCormick, Altan McDermott; Ben Harkin, Emmet Lafferty, Matthew Porter.  

Sub: Shay McLaughlin.

 St Eunan’s: Daire McBride; Sean Halvey, Brendan Horgan, Conor Neely; Conor O'Grady, Kevin Kealy, Ryan Hilfert; Brian MacIntyre; Fergal Delaney; Sean McVeigh, Cathal O’Brien, Daire Ó Maoileidigh; Peter Kelly; Cormac Finn, John Kealy. 

Subs used. David Horgan, Matt Ahern Brendan Gaffney, Lorcan Heavey.