Last Saturday evening we made the short trip to Killavullen to play city side Lough Rovers in the first round of the county junior b hurling championship and came away with a very impressive 21 point win after some outstanding hurling by the whole team.

We dominated the opening stages of this game and had an early goal from the lively Colman O’Reilly in the 5th minute and this was followed by points from Brian Sheedy and Brian O’Reilly before Lough Rovers had their first score from a free in the 10th minute, we were to continue the scoring after this and had points from Jerome Fitzgerald, Colman O’Rielly, Darren Roche and Brian Sheedy to leave the half time score Shanballymore 1-13 Lough Rovers 0-5.

We didn’t let up in the second half and with our back line of Declan Fitzgibbon,  Jonathan Dennehy,  Eoin McHugh, Richard Burke and Padraig Fitzgerald totally on top. Lough Rovers found no way through to get back in the game, we again went on a scoring blitz with some very good scores from Eoin O’Regan, Hallie Burke, Colman O’Rielly, Vincent Burke and the two Brian’s to surge into a massive lead of 1-25 to 0-7 by the 50th minute, the last few minutes saw a host of changes to give fresh legs a run and in injury time Lough Rovers got in for a goal which added some gloss to the score line for them but there was no denying us a comprehensive victory in this first round tie and put us in the hat for the next round draw which will pit us against tougher opponents.

Final score Shanballymore 1-29 Lough Rovers 1-7.

Team: Declan Fitzgibbon, Richard Burke, Eoin McHugh, Jonathan Dennehy, Padraig Fitzgerald, Sean lynch, Eoin O’Regan(0-1f), Michael Burke (0-1f), Darren Roche(0-2), Jerome Fitzgerald (0-3), Brian O’Reilly Reilly(0-4), Brian Sheedy (0-5(0-1f)), Vincent Burke (0-3), Alan Sheedy (0-1), Colman O’Reilly (1-7), Subs: Micheal O’Donovan (0-1), for Jerome Fitzgerald,  James Hayes for Micheal Burke, Niall Barry for Vincent Burke, Sean Cronin(0-1) for Alan Sheedy, Robert McHugh for Padraig Fitzgerald.