Naas add to incredible trophy winning run
Kevin Cummins (Naas) gets past David Shalvey of Sarsfields Photo: Sean Brilly
THEY may inscribe the four letters N-A-A-S on the Dermot Bourke Cup already it seems.
The embarrassment of riches available to the three-in-a-row county champions is illustrated as much by the names missing from Sunday’s Manguard Park stroll past Sarsfields in the Hanlon Concrete Senior Football League Division 1 final as those that featured.
Consider the ability of Darragh Kirwan, James Burke, Seán Hanafin, Mark Maguire, Conor McCarthy, Seán Cullen, Tom Browne, Jack Cleary and Brian Stynes. None played on Sunday. Jack McKevitt managed ten minutes from the bench.
It was a thoroughly ‘professional’ performance. Naas displayed confidence, composure and energy and as Joe Murphy alluded to afterwards, that attitude comes from within the camp, from the fierce pressure to retain a starting jersey in the face of that sort of competition.
Sarsfields traditionally had similar resources themselves, but that no longer appears to be the case. New manager Vinnie Walsh will need time for his ideas to gel, but he’ll be worried they fell so far short of their opponents in intensity, desire and craft.
‘Sash’ didn’t score from play until the last minute of the first half, a very quiet Ben McCormack with a determined shoulder on his marker Eoin Doyle before curling over a beauty that might have given his team a jolt of confidence against different opposition.
They still went in trailing 0-8 to 0-4 with Beirne and Cummins ending the half on three points each to add to scores from Elliot Beirne and Neil Ahern with Naas showing the clinical finishing that was sadly missing from opponents who dropped four shots short in the opening half.
Before McCormack’s point only a finely struck ’45 from Callum Bolton and two frees from an out-of-sorts Barry Coffey troubled the scoreboard for the men in green.
Sarsfields needed a bright start to the second half but instead it was Naas who put the game to bed inside nine minutes. Ahern landed the point of the game before man-of-the-match, the energetic younger Beirne brother Elliot, stretched the lead to six with his second point.
The Newbridge side struggled to make similar headway at the other end and in one vain attempt to find a breakthrough they inadvertently set up the clinching Naas goal on 39 minutes.
Ryan Kearney’s attempted pass across the face of the Naas defence landed into the arms of the grateful Alex Beirne and with only goalkeeper Mark Courtney-Byrne in the Sarsfields half, Beirne led a charge of the light brigade towards the town goal.
Naas men were noticeably quicker to join him and a four against three scenario saw captain Doyle deliver the final pass to Paddy McDermott for his county colleague to give Courtney-Byrne no chance with his finish to the net.
That made it 1-10 to 0-4 and although Sarsfields edged the remainder of play on the scoreboard it was no more than a training spin ahead of the Preliminary Round of the Championship in three weeks’ time.
Kearney’s free on 40 minutes was responded to by a Sinkey point and a free from Alex Beirne and with the sting gone out of it, Sarsfields managed a trio from play (Bolton, Shane Doyle and Daragh Ryan) during a period of play in which they lost young corner-back Daragh Conlon to a straight red card.
Naas wrapped up their scoring with points from Paul McDermott and Sinkey with a Doyle free the only reply from an outgunned Sarsfields.
