Mallow secured their place in this year’s all-Ireland Inter club semi-final by winning the Junior B Munster championship defeating Broadford in Cappagh last night. In what turned out to be a titanic battle Mallow retained their Munster crown by a score line of 121-82.
First in was Ryan Harkin who had been showing good form of late and this shone through in the first game winning by a margin of 21-3.His opponent Anthony Donnelly had however other plans during the second game and got under Ryan’s skin right from the start eventually closing out the game on a score line of 21-18.
This gave Mallow an advantage of 15pts going in to the second match a doubles contest with Ken O’Neill & Darren Whelan facing Pat Murphy & Noel Duggan. The influence of the recently held Billy Duggan memorial was clear to see in this match as Pat had obviously picked up a few tricks from the senior players who competed in that event as he was outstanding. Any ball that was put on to the back wall was not only killed, it was murdered. This level of precision had our lads under pressure which led to a defeat in the first by 21-18.The second game ebbed and toed like the first when the Mallow lads started to play a bit cuter cutting Pat out of the game more,leading to a turnaround and winning the second game on a score line of 21-15.
Going in to the final showdown Ciaran Buckley faced young Shane Murphy with an advantage of 19pts.The experience of Ciaran over Shane proved to be the deciding factor here with Ciaran winning both games and Mallow retaining their Munster crown for a second year in a row.
Mallow will now have to travel to the North to play their semi-final in the coming weeks.