Thursday, November 19, 2009

O'Reilly strikes late for Sutton: School's results


Leinster Schoolboy's Senior A league:
Sutton Park 1 (Eoin O'Reilly) Kilkenny College 0
Eoin O’Reilly’s short corner rebound six minutes from time earned Sutton Park all the points as they struck late to beat Kilkenny 1-0 in a high quality Senior A school’s league tie on Wednesday.

The win adds to their recent 2-2 draw against an under-strength St Andrew’s as the northside school continues to make huge strides under the tutelage of Colin Stewart and Ronan Walsh.

In truth, a draw may have been the fairer result as both sides created plenty of opportunities but found brick walls at either end in the form of Kilkenny’s George Smyth and Sutton’s Tom Fee.

Notice of a flowing first half was served inside 100 seconds as Killian Flood’s cross flashed across the circle before a sublime interchange between the Cats’ Brendan Dowling and Eamon Walsh was well smothered by Fee.

Such chances flowed thick in a typical school’s manner in the first half as the mercurial Evan Matthews pulled the strings in the Kilkenny engine room while the overlapping Matty Moore wreaked havoc down the right-wing. O’Reilly’s big overheads and solidity at centre-back, though, allied to Ferdia Carty’s driving runs made for an intriguing contest.

Chances came thick and fast with the influential Howard McDonnell rebounded onto the post with Luke Moore scrambling the clearance off the line. O’Reilly’s surge from the back, meanwhile, drew a fine save from Symth which Flood rebounded just wide of the post.

The second half was more circumspect as the defensive gaps of the first period plugged and goal-mouth action scarce and the tackling more ferocious.


Evan Matthews’ drag was well saved by Fee’s stick from the first corner of the game. The ensuing break out saw Sutton earn their only corner as Max Dozier - a gritty battler throughout at right-back – snuck into space from a long-corner and found a foot with his cross.

A neat one-two gave O’Reilly the initial shot from eight yards which Smyth shut down but the sweeper reacted quickest to sneak his shot into the right corner and the game was won.

Elsewhere, Wesley and St Andrew's are currently pencilled in to meet in the Senior A and Minor A leagues on Friday, November 27 at 4.45pm in Ballinteer.

Recent results
Senior A: Sutton Park 1 Kilkenny 0
Senior B: Wesley B 3 King's Hospital 3
Junior A: Kilkenny 4 Mount Temple 3
Junior B: Wesley B 5 St Andrew's 1
Minor A: Mount Temple 2 Sutton Park 3; Mount Temple 2 King’s Hospital 1
Minor B: King's Hospital 3 Mount Temple 1
U-13 B: King’s Hospital 5 Mount Temple 0

* If you have results, fixtures or stories on Schoolboy or girl's hockey at any level that you would like covered, drop me an email at stevie_findlats@yahoo.com.


** For more pictures from Sutton Park vs Kilkenny, click here

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stephen, why do you give more coverage to Schools games than senior hockey? doesn't make any sense

Anonymous said...

Its Andrews Junior A and U13 A playing in wesley tomorrow, Not the seniors and minors.

Stephen Findlater said...

By way of a basic explanation, there are 90 men's division one and women's division one games per season. As one man, trying to cover this amount of matches with up to ten games on a given Saturday, writing 350 word reports on each game is not feasible.

As for the school's hockey, it is something I am keen to give a space to promote. This is likely to be in the form of one article with results covering all levels of school's hockey. The format of the article is likely to change depending on whether I can get to a game during the week and what information is sent to me.

To 7:10pm, I've received info, as per the article, Wesley and Andrews will play on November 27.

Anonymous said...

what about the schoolgirls results?

Stephen Findlater said...

I'm awaiting info to be sent to me from the last round of matches and will post a round-up when it arrives.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous at 6.53...

Can you back of Stephen, he does a fantastic job running this website in his spare time and without it most people in Leinster/Irish hockey wouldnt have a clue whats happening on the hockey Scene.

Anonymous said...

the more schools the better its not all about div 1 hockey

Anonymous said...

Fair play steven I agree it's very important to promote the schools side of things and nobody would know anything about it otherwise.

Anonymous said...

i'm fully aware of what Stephen is doing for Leinster Hockey, and i both appreciate and enjoy this blog, but surely Ireland deserve more column inches than Sutton Park versus Kilkenny College???

Anonymous said...

eh, what more do you want? he's sourced videos, photos and written more words than any other journo in the country on the site all while a couple of thousand kilometres away from the action.

school's hockey got one story in the middle of all that and you complain! ridiculous, look at the length of the preview from last Saturday or the translation of the Belgian website on tuesday night...

catch yourself on 11.18, you fool

Anonymous said...

the all ireland schools and the varsities (which is essentially a piss up) have got more coverage than senior hockey this season. surely senior hockey is more important being that it is the level these school kids should aspire to play at... if they see themselves getting more exposure they will think 'whats the big deal' and senior hockey may suffer. that in my opinion is ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

International stories this week = 6 to date, 5 videos posted, plenty of pics

Schools stories = 1, 1 set of pics...

Definite school's priority there!

Anonymous said...

go back a couple of weeks and you'll see every match in the AIS covered followed by the Intervarsities. This is not something i've just suddenly thought of...

Stephen Findlater said...

Basically, I'm going to stop this comment thread here as it is going around in circles a bit.

From an editorial point of view, though this is a Leinster blog, I have covered each Ireland international fixture on the site in 2009. Unfortunately, though I had hoped to travel to Argentina, funds being what they are, I could not afford it. As such, I'm taking in information from a couple of sources in between my regular work and coverage is reflective of what I've been able to source.

My apologies if you feel school and university hockey receives more coverage than the Irish senior team.