Castletown slight favourites to prevent Clonkill hat-trick

It’s probably fair to speculate that if a vox pop was undertaken before a ball was pucked in this strangest-of-strange Westmeath senior hurling championships, interviewing a cross-section of Lake County Gaels, a very strong majority would have predicted the final to involve the precise pairing that will do battle next Sunday in TEG Cusack Park (throw-in 4pm).

Despite the shortened format – inevitable given the havoc that Covid-19 has wreaked on sport and many other forms of entertainment – Clonkill and Castletown-Geoghegan have made their respective ways to what is an eagerly-awaited showdown in Mullingar.

Indeed, it was interesting to get the views (elsewhere in this week’s paper) of one of this county’s greatest hurlers of all time, Brendan Murtagh, on the abbreviated race for the Westmeath Examiner Cup when compared with previous years when a club could lose a round robin match or two – an astonishing three in the holders’ case last year – and still emerge as county champions come the autumn.

The former Leinster player – who surely deserved an All Star nomination in his prime – is very much in favour of the league-style competition to allow managers to blood players in the white heat of championship battle. These are logical and admirable sentiments, and county board officials are – perfectly understandably – likely to concur in order to keep the tills ticking over throughout the summer months, but many neutrals and reporters (the latter spared the drag of sitting through weekends of ‘dead rubbers’) have been delighted with the snappy format forced on the powers-that-be by the virus which has made 2020 into the ultimate annus horribilis.

The upshot of the past couple of months is that the current ‘big two’ are back on the big stage in a repeat of last year’s final. The vox ‘popees’ referred to in the opening paragraph are very likely also to have forecast three of the semi-finalists correctly, Castlepollard being the exception with their draw against Raharney (whose campaign was very disappointing overall) proving enough to sneak into the penultimate round on scoring difference. ‘Pollard proved no real match for Castletown-Geoghegan, while Lough Lene Gaels (in a near-replica of The Downs’ challenge in the football semi-final against St Loman’s, Mullingar) had the pre-match favourites in all sorts of bother, but could not nail down the lid on the coffin.

Therein lies the task facing Pat O’Brien’s charges next Sunday. In recent years, Clonkill under the tutelage of Pat O’Toole, David O’Reilly, Kevin O’Brien, and now O’Toole again, have proven that they can eke out a win in a knockout game despite not being at their sharpest. Wise hurling heads, like the aforementioned Murtagh (whose star quality continues to shine through in his late 30s), Paddy Dowdall and Eoin Price, with oodles of big match experience between them, still backbone the green and gold-clad side, and their three in-a-row target remains highly attainable, despite the significant absence of injured inter-county star, Niall Mitchell. They also have another potential match-winner in the mercurial Luke Loughlin.

If Mitchell’s Westmeath colleague, Shane Clavin, is also ruled out through injury – both were ‘victims’ of hectic schedules as prominent dual players – the books are reasonably balanced in that regard. Neal Kirby may also be unavailable for the men in the famous black and amber strip, but the challengers’ forward line still contains class in abundance with hurlers of the proven calibre of Niall O’Brien and the Clarke brothers, Aonghus and Joe.

Yours truly summed up last year’s final, won on a scoreline of 2-16 to 1-16 by Clonkill, as “a decider which seldom reached any great heights but remained gripping to the final whistle due to the closeness of the scoring”. I take it that I wasn’t far off the mark in that terse comment as I wasn’t devoured in the intervening 12 months!

Methinks – and mehopes! – that next Sunday could be a much more riveting contest. The bookies (who generally drive 201 reg cars!) have Castletown-Geoghegan as marginal favourites, assumedly based on their more convincing win in the respective semi-finals. It is bound to be very tight, and 200 lucky spectators can expect to have short fingernails by the time promising referee Caymon Flynn blows the final whistle around 5.30pm on Sunday.

The details of last year’s final were as follows:

Scorers: Clonkill: B Murtagh 0-6 (2f, 1‘65’), J Smyth 1-2, P Scally 1-0, L Loughlin 0-2, P Dowdall, L Folan, C Austin, N Mitchell, N Dowdall and Anthony Price 0-1 each. Castletown-Geoghegan: A Clarke 0-9 (7f), C O’Brien 1-0, J Clarke 0-3, L Varley, D Lynch, P Maxwell and A Corbett 0-1 each.

Clonkill: Andrew Mitchell; Darragh Egerton, Adam Price, John Kenny; Kelvin Reilly, Paddy Dowdall, Luke Folan; Shane Power, Christopher Austin; Niall Mitchell, Peadar Scally, Luke Loughlin; Niall Dowdall, Brendan Murtagh, Jordy Smyth. Subs used: Anthony Price for N Dowdall (40), Eoin Price for Austin (46), Mark Keegan for P Dowdall (52), Ciaran Nolan for Scally (59), Adam Loughlin for Smyth (60 + 6).

Castletown-Geoghegan: Sean Maher; Conor Kane, Dean McDermott, Aaron Glennon; Liam Varley, Shane Clavin, David Lynch; Johnny Bermingham, Plunkett Maxwell; Neal Kirby, Aonghus Clarke, Paddy Doody; Joe Clarke, Niall O’Brien, Ciaran O’Brien. Subs used: Eoin Quinn for Kirby (inj., 15), Andrew Corbett for Doody (h-t), Cormac Deegan for C O’Brien (55), Naoise McKenna for J Clarke (60 + 1).

Ref: Alfie Devine (Castlepollard).