Last week on this website, we saw the St Brendan’s Football 1st XV win away from home in the Championship, Today, The St Brendan’s Hurlers, Sponsored by Bodibro, hope to join their Football counterparts in the Semi-finals of the Junior C Championship, and we are back in Grangegorman for the first time in quite a while, standing in the way of St Brendan’s today are Clontarf, 3rd in Group 2 of the Junior C Championship. 

The Dark Force began the match in typical St Brendan’s fashion with a point seconds after the throw in thanks to JJ ‘72’ Lennon, after The Wexican won the throw in and pass to Cathal ‘The Jester’ Kelly, and finally Lennon with the score. 

But disaster struck six minutes into the contest when the aforementioned Kelly, picked up an injury, after winning a free in and was unable to continue. Gary ‘The Heavyweight’ Mason came on for Kelly and Lennon converted the free in, 0-2 to 0-1. 

12:11 gone and Lennon made it a hat trick of points with a free in after Clontarf handled the sliotar off the ground. 

Clontarf were getting on top of the game and despite first seeing a goal bound shot go woefully wide, with five minutes to go in the second half, lead 1-7 to 0-3, with back-to-back free ins and winning goalkeeper Rob ‘Shane Lowry’ Hanrahan’s puck out with a looping shot into the net. 

But St Brendan’s ensured that the second half would be competitive, firstly, Lennon converted his third free in and fourth point overall and then Jack ‘The Relegater’ McCarron won a turnover and passed to Pa Carey and finally onto Shane ‘Harry Styles’ Nolan when a cracking shot into the back of the Clontarf net. 

A free in by Clontarf was the last action of a first half where the wind kept picking up and dying down but either way, St Brendan’s will have the luxury of wind advantage in that second half. Half Time Score St Brendan’s 1-4 Clontarf 1-8. 

St Brendan’s got off to an encouraging start in the second half with a point from Eoin Fallon after Ciaran Ludden emerged with possession after a scramble, a point described by Gavin Muldoon as the most Eoin Fallon point ever! However, the away side opened five-point lead momentarily, but the lead became four-point game with another free in after McCarron almost got his hand taken off with an opposition hurley.  

15 minutes to go to extend the Hurlers season by at least weeks and Oisin Daly collected a half blocked down Fallon shot to puck the sliotar over the bar for a three-point game again. 

Cian Walsh introduced The Goal Getter Gavin Muldoon in place of Fallon and this had the desired effect when hitting 1-1 in the space of two minutes, the goal The Goal Getter craved for finally game when a Nolan shot was saved but collected by Muldoon and his shot went into the net to make it 2-8 to 1-12. 

Muldoon also had a second chance for a goal, which was saved, only as far as Nolan, that too was saved for a 65. Lennon played the short 65 to Michael Harte who found Nolan and his shot levelled the match with 6 minutes to go, 2-9 to 1-12. 

Any chance of a dramatic climax would not materialize as Clontarf hit three points on the spin as the game went into injury time. The Wexican Oisin Carley won a free in for St Brendan’s 25 meters from goal. Ciaran Ludden had the duty to take the free and hope to get a goal, with 11 Clontarf players on the goal line, Ludden’s shot was a few inches too high and went over the bar to put two between the sides. 

Then Clontarf sealed the deal with another long-distance point and seconds later, the referee blew the final whistle to bring the curtain down on the St Brendan’s Hurlers 2024 season. A Season which saw the team only lose three matches all year and yet can look forward to Division 6 Hurling in 2025. 

Final Score from Grangegorman, St Brendan’s 2-10 Clontarf 1-16.