Our Junior B football team got off to a great start in the County Football Championship last Saturday evening against local rivals Grange. Played in sunny conditions in Glanworth, it was perfect conditions for Football. The game began at a high tempo and Grange weren’t long giving us cause for concern, going 0-4 to 0-1 up within 10 minutes. From here on though, Shanballymore eventually got going and kept the game for the most part in our control. Barry Sheedy had opened our scoring with a point from play after 5 minutes. A few minutes later Jamie Sheedy pointed a free to cut the deficit to 2 points. For the remainder of the half Shanballymore played great passing football and at half time we were up 0-6 to 0-4. Kenneth Barry proved difficult to handle at corner forward with 2 points in that first half.

With the 2^nd half under way Kenneth Barry was off the mark again with 2 more points. In this opening period of the half Grange found our half back line very difficult to get past with Eoin O’Regan breaking a lot of ball and Colman O’Reilly making a number of fruitful runs forward. We had 5 unanswered points scored before Grange got in for a score again. Eoin McHugh taking over free taking duties from Kenneth Barry with 2 well placed efforts. Haulie Burke who was getting forward more and more as the game wore on also got a great point from play. The game finished 0-15 to 0-7 in our favour. If the lads can keep playing football at this level we should stay very competitive in future rounds of this competition.

Team: S. Donegan, D. Roche, B. Sheedy, P. Fitzgerald, E. O’Regan, M. Burke (0-1), C. O’Reilly, B. Sheedy(0-2), E. McHugh (0-4, 2f), V. Burke, B. O’Reilly, J. Sheedy (0-1, 1f), K. Barry (0-5, 2f), S. Lynch, D. Palmer (0-1) Subs:  R. McHugh, P. Burke (0-1), A. Sheedy, S. Cronin